Election Fever II...

...H here with news from the frontline of campaigning.

As you will have gathered from dear PP, Mildred and I have spent much of the last two weeks in the War Room - as I tend to refer to the morning parlour at such times - planning our strategy for the impending Parish Council elections.

In due deference to PP's own position, 'Chinese Walls' - much favoured at present by the loathsome Ms Jowell for reasons too sordid to mention - have been erected between myself and caro mio for the duration of the battle. It would simply not do for the poor fellow to be informed of, let alone become involved in, the various machinations that must perforce take place at such a significant hour.

Whilst most angles - those one has become accustomed to encounter in this democratic conflict - have been covered (the baker squared as to who should have the contract for hospitality at any festal gathering, the builder assured that should the fund for the restoration of the roof ever be replete he alone would be expected to undertake the work - that sort of necessary thing) there is one deeply, deeply troubling and unexpected threat that has M and I burning more midnight oil than we could reasonably be expected to 'carbon offset.'

I refer to one Miss Shanklin who moved into the cottage of the late and much lamented teacher, Mr Sandown, last summer. My oversight no doubt - though at the time the saving of any plant in the garden was a necessary pressing priority in such a drought - but I did not take the required occasion to welcome Cathy into our fold, check her bone fides and ensure she could be relied upon to be one of us, as it were.

Nature and village life both abhorring a vacuum, it would seem that the dread Mrs J. took advantage of my absence to seduce the poor woman into her own fold. Cathy, being an 'outsider' (bred, born and raised in some desperate inner-London suburb, worked her short life in a lucrative but utterly unnecessary public post, determined now to 'get in touch with her roots' and thus moved to the Wolds whilst keeping feet in various metro-sexual doors) proved to be a complete ingenue, so anxious to be polite and felt wanted by the village as to fall straight into the noxious lap of Mrs J.

I do truly blame myself. (Just as well perhaps that dear PP declines to be my confessor on the grounds of possible 'conflict of interest.' If I were to tell him that - mea culpa - Ms Shanklin has 'gone astray' he would have been most stern in his reasonable rebuke of my failure properly to differentiate between local politics and mortal sin.)

Cutting though to the chase as one must, it would seem that Mrs J has persuaded young Cathy to stand for election to the Parish Council, making much of her [Cathy's] knowledge of the 'bigger picture' and absolutely nothing of her [Mrs J's] more narrow aspirations to power.

My fear - and one much shared by Mildred - is that Ms Shanklin's obvious personal and personable qualities (slim, tall, elegant, good hair but not over done, a figure much suited to corduroys as to 'little black dresses') might - totally unknowingly of course - unduly influence the masculine vote of the parish in her - and Mrs J's - favour.

One can already sense a 'Mo' - momentum as they say in America - building. Even dear PP returned yesterday from his occasional round of golf to pronounce 'That Miss Shanklin you know, she really does have a darn good swing. Do you think we might invite her to supper soon?"

Worrying times ahead!