Mad MPs, Saintly Constituents, And The All-Too Brief Career Of Professor Molly Bennett.

Ouf, I'm sure the number of constituents contacting us has already doubled since the cuts started. People are terrified of the effect the changes are having on every aspect of their lives, from health to jobs.

Talking of which, the latest spate of redundancies in Northwick doesn't augur too well for my plan to find myself a new career. Which seems even more urgent today, because The Boss has stopped speaking to me again.

This doesn't usually matter when he's in Westminster as, when he's in a sulk, he doesn't normally count conversations where he can't see my face as talking - but today he's not even willing to speak to me on the phone. Every time he calls and I answer, he hangs up on me. It's hard not to take offence after it happens for about the fifth time in the last ten minutes.

Greg looks at the phone when it next rings, then raises his eyebrows and says,

"Private line again, Mol. Want me to try answering it this time?"

"Yes, please," I say. "Maybe you can tell if it's a fault on the line and not just Andrew being an idiot."

Greg picks up the receiver, listens for a second and then says,

"Oh, yes - hi, Andrew. I'm glad it's you - we thought there was something wrong with this line. It keeps ringing and then no-one speaks."

There's another pause, and then he says, "It's the first time you've called? Well, okay - yes, I'll fax it now. Ring me back when you get it."

Greg says that the mystery hang-ups must have been due to a problem at the exchange, as Andrew sounded "fairly convincingly innocent."

So I calm down and stop swearing about passive aggression, until there's yet another call on the private line and I pick up the phone. To be met with silence, except for Marie-Louise's voice in the background saying, "Andrew, what about this?" quickly followed by the dialling tone.

"So much for blaming BT," I say to Greg. "For once, it's definitely not their fault. Andrew's just playing silly buggers again."

Greg pulls a face and sends me a link to Trovit Jobs as an admission of defeat. I register my details on the site, though I have absolutely no idea what sort of work I'm seeking. It's the same problem as with my CV - there's no neat way of summarising all the disparate stuff I do at work. Or not without sounding as if I am a psychiatric nurse, anyway.

Eventually, I just select anything and everything that could possibly be relevant, and then tick the box to confirm that I want to receive regular emails advising me of all the vacancies that might suit my (admittedly-peculiar) skill-set.

"You're learning the pointless jargon already," says Greg. "If you don't watch out, you'll soon be sounding as if you work for Northwick Council, and not for a bad-tempered MP with an unpredictable nature."

This prospect worries me so much that I decide I'd better distract myself by doing some proper work, so I phone Sheila Renshaw, to check how things are going with her.

The call quickly puts my problems into stark perspective. Sheila sounds terrible: exhausted and uncharacteristically tearful; and her usual optimism to seems to have gone completely AWOL.

"I don't think I can cope much longer," she says. "I can't bear to watch him suffer like this, and I really think he needs to be in hospital too."

Sheila's husband, Fred, is much older than she is, but there's no doubting it was - and still is - a love match. She adores him, even though she says that Alzheimers has reduced him to a shell of his former self.

"How many hours of help are you getting now?" I ask, but I can't hear Sheila's answer at all. It's obliterated by a loud, drawn-out sound. I've never heard anything like it, but it makes my stomach feel really funny.

"What on earth was that?" I say. "Did you get a dog for Christmas, or something?"

"No," says Sheila. "That's Fred. He started doing it about a month ago and - "

The rest of that sentence is also rendered impossible to hear by another of Fred's seemingly-random noises, which sound like a very protracted, "Urrrrrr."

"Does he do that all day?" I say.

"Yes," says Sheila. "And all night - the poor, poor man."

Honestly, the woman is a saint. Having to listen to that agonised sound would drive me insane with helplessness within an hour, and yet - as usual - Sheila's only thought is for her husband's pain. I have no idea how I'd cope if Max ever developed such an horrible illness, and I can't even bear to think about how long he'd be able to put up with me if I was the one affected.

Carers have been having a terrible time for years, and yet it seems that things may be about to get even worse, if the Riven Vincent case is just the tip of the iceberg, as I bet it bloody well is. What scares me the most is how the cuts are going to affect all the children caring for sick or disabled parents. They're the most frequently overlooked - and the least likely to know how or where to seek help. If there's any help left, that is - once the cuts have done their work.

It's a horrible thought and, by the time I get home from work, I'm starting to see why Josh says he hates change so much. It is a bit unnerving - and the global picture doesn't help. Events seem to be spiralling out of control everywhere, so I'm expecting Josh to object when I switch on the TV in time for Channel 4 News.

He doesn't. For once, he's viewing change as a force for good.

"Go, Egypt, go," he says, as soon as some footage of Cairo appears. Max doesn't reply, but gives me a funny look, which I return in kind.

"What are you two up to?" says Josh, who never misses anything. "The Egyptians are bringing a repressive regime to an end, and you should be cheering them on. Why are you both pulling such freaked-out faces? What is wrong with people your age? Holly's parents were acting just like you two the other night when the riots started."

"Well, we can't help thinking about the Shah of Iran," says Max, at the same time as I say,

"Ayatollah Khomeini."

Josh is quite obviously none the wiser, so then I end up giving a political lecture about the Iranian Revolution and the kind of people who can step in to fill a vacuum. I think I keep it pretty snappy  - as at least he is still awake by the time I get to the creation of the Islamic Republic, even if his father isn't.

But I don't care about Max's snoring, for once, because Josh has accidentally solved my career problem: I shall apply for a job teaching at a university, and become an esteemed expert in Recent Political History.

I spend the next half an hour signing my name on the back of an old Select Committee Report as Professor Molly Bennett  - until Josh tells me that he's checked online and that all the posts in Politics departments have already been snapped up by MPs who lost their seats.

Probably ones like The Boss, who have never even heard of Gilmour or Tawney despite the fact that both were required reading if you wanted to get a degree in Politics in the olden days. Ignorance continues to be its own reward.

Amputations, Victim Culture and Gang Warfare

Our phones don't stop ringing all day today, so I still don't get a chance to find out what Greg's planning. It pains me to admit it, but one of the legacies of 13 years of a Labour Government seems to have been a huge increase in victim culture. Honestly, the amount of complaining I hear today from people with minor problems is incredible.

First thing in the morning, Mr Franklin phones to tell me that it's my job to get him his emergency benefit payment "asap," as he's going on holiday tomorrow and needs to buy his holiday wardrobe. He takes the opportunity to remind me several times that he is "severely disabled."

I can't remember the last time Max and I could afford a holiday, but it must be more than ten years ago. And yet here's Mr Franklin off on yet another bloody jaunt. I wouldn't mind so much, but the only thing wrong with him is that he's hugely fat.

When I've finally got rid of Mr F by agreeing to phone the Benefits Agency this afternoon and plead his case for emergency funds to buy a collection of outsized Hawaiian shirts, the lovely Mr Bradley phones.

He starts by apologising profusely for "bothering" his MP, but wonders if there is anything we can do to help him as he's getting nowhere by himself. It turns out, after he had his leg amputated months ago, the hospital forgot to arrange ambulance transport to take him to his follow-up appointments. Which means that he still hasn't been able to get his prosthetic leg fitted.

"It's not all bad," he says. "The grandchildren love it when I fall over, but it is making caring for my wife  a little tricky."

Mrs Bradley has severe Alzheimers, and yet Mr B sounds embarrassed to have to ask for help! Sometimes I think the world is going mad.

The Boss isn't suffering from any such reluctance to complain today, though. He's phoning every few minutes to moan about everything: having to sit on the "wrong" side of the House; John Bercow still being Speaker, and the fact that he hasn't managed to persuade the Commons authorities to move his office out of Portcullis House, and back into the HOC* itself.

He's even complaining that the girls in the London office take up too much room and that their legs get in his way. As far as I can remember, it was primarily the length (and shape) of their legs that persuaded him to employ them in the first place, so I don't exactly have much sympathy with his point of view. Now it seems as if he'd like them to get their legs amputated to avoid causing him further inconvenience.

When I tell him that I think he's lucky that his office hasn't been moved into a broom cupboard, given the election result, he just says,

"Well, that's where that bloody idiot Gordy's new office should be."

Then he adds that he has a cunning plan to disrupt the work of the Coalition. When he explains that this involves nothing more than giving disorientated new MPs misleading directions to the Commons Chamber, I congratulate him on his maturity and he hangs up on me.

It seems that The Boss isn't the only one causing trouble today, though. At lunchtime, I get a call from Josh's tutor, saying that Josh is to be in detention this afternoon for "leaving class mid-lesson for no reason, and being obstreperous when told off."

When I get home from work, I demand an explanation from Josh. He informs me that the teacher is a "f*ckwit who doesn't understand the meaning of the word emergency."

Apparently, Josh "had no choice" but to rush out of the classroom, due to his having suddenly noticed the words, Josh Bennett is gay, written in large letters on the wall outside the window. He obviously considers this slight on his heterosexuality to have more than justified his impromptu exit, and is incredulous than anyone should have objected.

"When I'd painted it out, I went straight back to class, anyway," he says. Painted it out? Am I raising a  member of the underclass? Why would Josh even possess a can of spray-paint, let along keep one in his rucksack for so-called emergencies?

On this evidence, my son could be a vandal, or involved in a gang war, so I ask Max to deal with Josh. His attempt at parental discipline seems to involve no more than laughing and then patting Josh on the shoulder. As a result, things are rather frosty between us until Max falls asleep on the sofa.

Just before bed, Greg sends me an email containing a link to an old article about the cost of air-lifting an extremely obese man from his home, to enable him to attend a hospital appointment. Greg says:

"This'll be Mr Franklin next, Molly - and we taxpayers will be the ones paying for it!"

Oh, good God. Are Greg and I becoming fascists, or worse, Tories? It's all very worrying.


*HOC: House of Commons, for those of you lucky enough not to be involved in the world of UK politics.