I really feel that I need to reassure you that Lady Phyllis and I did arrive home from France in time for the Conference that we Unaffiliated Independents held at Bognor Regis last October . A number of you were good enough to have enquired after us.
It is quite a long drive up France especially now that we no longer have the benefit of using our Friend’s house for a rest en route .Truth to tell , he no longer has a house as he sold it a couple of years back. He seemed to think that things were no longer as they used to be. Said the country had been corrupted by a socio-economic-malaise, characterised by both indolence and financial corruption. I am not sure that I would put it as strongly as that myself, but the poor chap seems to have suffered at the hands of the natives. Didn’t care too much for the Estate Agents some of whom seemed not to have a clue as to how to sell a house, and thought any price was the right valuation. After he had sorted that lot out, he was landed with a Notaire who seemed too arrogant to bother to either get his facts right or be even handed between his two clients. I had told my friend at the time he bought the place, that he was making a grave error so to do, told him that it was tantamount to putting one’s life in the hands of fate. When out in the Desert one does not have to buy an adobe hut of one’s own. The Natives are not only hospitable, but willing to move out of their own home, should you wish to have the exclusive use of it, jolly decent sort of chaps most of them. Same in France to the best of my knowledge. Unless one plans to go native best leave accommodation to the indigenous people. Lot of English buying over there, but lots of others selling up. Experience is a fine thing, I could tell you a thing or two about that, bit too busy to do so at the moment.
Now, the excitement of the Local Elections is upon us, and the ‘Hustings’ buzz with the confused tones of Party Politicians defending their sinecures against the hoard of unaffiliated Independents we sent forth from Bognor Regis.
One has been so busy since our return to Blighty, that there has hardly been time for my feet to touch the ground. Lady Phyllis has been driving me in the Rolls from one end of England to the other in the cause of the Restoration of Apolitical Local Government. A woman like her makes one proud to be British. Quite a Sport too, insists on placing my General’s Stars on the car’s flagpole, not sure one is entitled so to do in Retirement, but who will bother about such small vanities; possibly onlookers think that a Rolls of our vintage must be featuring in some Kinematographic re-enactment deploring the seventieth anniversary of the accession of Neville Chamberlain, or maybe the bombing of Guernica. Never know which tragedy some of those Johnnies will try to turn a quick buck on next.
Before writing these few lines to you today, I dispatched my final words of encouragement to all those Independently minded Public Spirited Individuals who give their all, to the common cause. Men and Women cast in the mould of Nelson or Bodicea , who offer real leadership rather than bend as might a reed in the wind, to the immorality of pervading opportunism. Go out and vote for them. England still expects that every ‘man’ will do his duty on the 3rd.of May 2007. I do not doubt that this year will be decisive in our fight to restore Democratic Local Government to the people.
God Bless you all and let the best men win, whichever their gender.
Wrant. General Retired.
By the way. There was a rather disappointing response to that bit of poetry in my last article. I think the suggestion was there of making an attribution of it to Betjeman. Maybe he actually published it somewhere or another. Lady Phyllis would be very pleased to receive a literary reference, as too would Madame. I would not like her to think I was an out of sight out of mind sort of a man. That was never my way in life. …..Wrant.