Irish Sea

I spent Wednesday out with Trina delivering Labour Party election leaflets, jumping out of her car and haring up pathways and drives, in the ugly uPvC'd flatlands of rural Lancashire. When possible, I filched the Conservative party's leaflets out of the letterboxes and threw them away. The leaflet I was delivering contained an article, illustrated with a picture of the invertebrate Ed Miliband in his anonymising suit, pointing upwards somewhere, to make him look authoritative I suppose, about how Labour will "make work pay". What about making idleness pay? When you read the detail, it amounts to some trivial change in tax relief. And to think, this is a party which, in living memory, advocated the common ownership of the means of production.

It was hot and tiring work, for a party I don't support, so I was compelled to repair to the pub in Preston to gather myself. A man at the bar was wearing a T-shirt which recast the Nike logo and typeface to say "Pikey. Just nick it." I settled down to read a bit more of The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, my choice -- because Kim recommended it to me -- for our book club next month. "Emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. In the middle, they are acted." I texted texted Kim to thank her for putting me onto it. "It's like having a talkative, interesting but meticulously self-obsessed person sat opposite you."

Last month's book club was even more drunken than they usually are, due to the plentiful supplies of Prosecco. The following day I had to text another bloke (it's chaps only) asking him to remind me what book I had chosen. "No idea, date or book. Too pissed at the end," he replied.

This was the scene a year ago in Morecambe, and we're doing it again this year. The weather is gorgeous here at the moment, so some of it can take place outside. There's an excellent video on YT which one of the regulars made, which gives you an idea of what we'll be getting up to. "They were blatantly enjoying themselves. Some of them must have been at least fifty," said one eyewitness.

I've had one or two enquiries about the room, at last, and someone came round last night to look at it. I think it's important to give everyone a fair chance regardless of age, looks etc. However, at the same time, one has to be very careful about EU discrimination law, so I'm going to give first dib to a gorgeous twentysomething Italian brunette glasses-wearing nurse, for legal reasons.