An Epidemic of the Maladjusted....

I have new underwear - lots of it! It doesn't feel great - a bit cheap and scratchy - but as it only has to look acceptable in a photo, who cares? This cheers me up no end, and helps my blood pressure normalise after The Boss gives me a bollocking for "breaching Mr Humphries' confidentiality" by phoning the Police, and then giving a statement when asked to do so! Mr H, meanwhile, is in hospital on a section and hopefully getting some help at last. There is to be an injunction against him returning to the building, so everyone's relieved, except for The Boss, who rants as if he too needs to be sectioned during his phone-call - made from his nice, secure office in Westminster. I wouldn't mind so much, but he's never even met Mr H.

Greg phones James again. His Mum answers and says her son is far too shocked by yesterday's events to ever return to work, and that The Boss should know better than to expose staff to such outrageous risks. I should imagine James'll make doubly sure that any future internship is in the House of Commons, before he accepts it. Maybe he's even been put off politics for good, and will get himself a proper job instead. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Greg has to pack up all James' tea paraphernalia and his bowel medications, and post them back to him. Then he spots the Primark carrier bag on my desk and, before I know it, he's wearing my new lace boxer shorts. On his head. I should be cross, but the sight makes listening to Mr Beales' lengthy phone call oddly bearable. I think I may suggest that cranial knicker wearing is introduced nationwide as a contractual requirement for constituency staff. I'm never going to wear those pants myself now, though.

In the evening, I am in the bathroom, trying to photograph my own arse in the mirror - trickier than it sounds - when I'm interrupted by a phone call from Mum. She says that Dad has been phoning her a lot. What? He hasn't mentioned that to me, but Mum says that he apparently got her number from Connie - who'll tell anyone anything, the idiot. Now what the hell is going on? I like both my biological parents to stay nicely in their separate boxes, along with their matching and various new spouses. It's the bloody least they can do to compensate for making me the insecure maladjusted child of a broken home.

Greg Narrowly Avoids a Boris Johnson Moment

Greg spends the day holding forth about how badly we are paid. (Some of us more than others, actually.) He has a theory that every pound he pays in taxes goes direct to Liverpool to be spent on shell-suits, but when I suggest he tests this on George Osborne at the Treasury, he doesn't seem to want to take it that far. Maybe he does retain at least a vestige of political-correctness, unless he's just worried about creating a Boris-type storm by insulting the Scousers in writing.

Honestly, if all Labour MPs' staffers are becoming reactionaries like Greg and I, what on earth are the Tory ones like? Are they even worse than us, spending their days wishing they could hang or flog everyone who makes contact with them? Or maybe they're our mirror-images, and nurture secret fantasies of becoming social workers while wearing cardigans knitted from lentils.

It'd be funny if all Tory staff were secret socialists and all New Labour's were covert Tories - although I guess the latter wouldn't really be that surprising post-Blair. Maybe I should work for a Conservative MP, but that would mean that my decades of Labour Party membership would have been wasted. Oh, but I forgot - I'm not a member any more. The world's my lobster.

Sometimes the knowledge that you have other options is very comforting, especially when you have to deal with someone like Mr Beales. He phones just before the office closes for the day, to ask whether The Boss has written his reference for the court yet.

"What reference?" I ask.

I wish I hadn't. It turns out that The Boss has agreed to write to the judge, confirming Mr Beales' excellence as a photographer. Andrew knows even less than Mr Beales about photography - but then lack of knowledge on any subject has never prevented him from voicing an opinion on it, preferably as publicly as possible.