Mandelson and the last 10 days – Jan 26th – Feb 4th

It’s been quite a busy week. On Tuesday of last week we had our fortnightly 2 Pint Meditation at The Fairhaven followed by my appointment with the diabetes nurse on Wednesday. For those of you who haven’t been keeping up, this is my first appointment which has been postponed twice, so it’s actually about 3 months since I was informed that I was diabetic. My nurse was very pleased that I has lost about a stone in weight and my blood test showed a reduction in blood sugar levels so all is improving.

To celebrate, on Saturday we went for brunch to Zest in Lytham (very nice) and on Sunday, to celebrate the end of January, we went to The Fairhaven for lunch (also very nice).

Sadly, yesterday we attended the funeral of an old friend. While it was lovely to see so many familiar faces, some of whom we hadn’t seen for ages, the circumstances were not ideal.

I have been doing some walking, but the weather has been cold, windy and wet largely so it hasn’t been very pleasant. I am however hoping to get out this afternoon.

The news has been full of the Epstein files and the people (men mainly obvs) whose reputations are being left in tatters by them. I felt the need to comment on this but wasn’t sure how until I found this totally fictitious letter in an equally totally fictitious cache of emails sent to a completely fictitious email account. In case you haven’t taken that last sentence on board, this isn’t real…….. but perhaps should be.

Dear Peter,

              I thought I should write a note to say thank you for all your help with the Gorton and Denton by-election and also with our wider aims for the country. We were hoping to get one of your members to join us but, frankly, this has been much more effective.

              When Robert, Nadim, Suella and the other bloke that nobody had ever heard of joined us, we were quite happy, but also very conscious of the fact that these people had already screwed up the country over the last few years. This meant that we left ourselves open to the charge that we were just the right wing of the Tory party, which was not how we wanted people to see us.

              We have been very successful in convincing a portion of the population that all their problems have been caused by the same people who keep the NHS and many other public services running and we are very grateful to the billionaires who have funded this message. We do need, however, to lean into the story that most, if not all, current politicians are self-serving and only out for themselves. Your involvement with Mr Epstein, whether anything untoward happened or not, will be a huge help in our work.

              We are also very grateful that our friends in the press have switched from concentrating on the abused women in this story and are now just picking on politicians and business leaders who do not support our aims. The situation of the abused women was becoming a distraction and was not reflecting well on several of our allies.

              So, once again, thank you Peter. In the spirit of reconciliation, we hope the police investigation does not find anything that might discomfort you or your husband. I am sure that, if things get too rough, your old friend Tony can find you a job on “The Board of Peace”.

                                                                        Yours, Nigel

Heather’s having a busy morning making soup and lemon curd (In different pans obviously) and, to make up for the excellent buffet at the funeral yesterday, we’re having veggie mousaka for tea.