Carrie on Camping

Hi Sue,

Thanks so much for your message. Soz not to have been in touch but as you can imagine it’s been a bit of a roller coaster these last months what with all the holidays and the baby and Al (Boris to you) getting the Coronavirus. And then, of course, there’s the tiresome issue of people expecting him to run the country.  

Dom decreed we would ‘go camping’ this year: “Millions of little folks do it” Al (PM to most) reassured me and “getting back to nature for a bit” would apparently do wonders for the opinion polls. But it all seems a little silly when there are perfectly good villas going on Mustique. Since this boring old pandemic began I’m told you can get a whole complex with a butler for as little as $25,000. 

But that would ‘play badly with the tabloids’ according to Dom so we’ve gone to Scotland instead.

BJ is determined to make this country a better place – for him and his chums and I find that so inspiring

Of course the great danger there is that we meet actual Scottish people. Inexplicably the Scots have yet to take to Al (Boris to the world) or understand that he’s the greatest leader this country has ever had. News travels slowly once you’re outside the M25 and as Cummings says, “the thankless Scots have yet to work out how lucky they are to be liberated from out of touch bureaucrats and elitist politicians, in a far off city, in another country, in a made up union, that has no interest in them.” 

We left the dog behind. Dilyn will insist on going for BJ’s testicles – or the ‘Brexits’ as he calls them and they did one of those safety assessment things and concluded it might not be a good idea to have such a playful dog on a helicopter.

“It’s ‘elf and Safety Gone Mad,” as my Great Great Uncle Morris would say, prior to his electrocution on that pylon, while drunkenly retrieving a kite. 

The camp-site itself is actually a walled croquet lawn in the grounds of a castle that belongs to Al’s old chum, Seymour Dick – his family are big in underwear apparently.

Seymour seemed rather taken aback to have three helicopters land on his tennis courts while his family were playing a set. Poor chap spent a good twenty minutes running about yelling: ‘Why are you here? No deal has been done, no arrangements had been made’ which Al seemed to find very amusing.

Turns out Al had sent him a postcard but it hadn’t arrived in time.

“A postcard?” Seymour shouted above the din of the helicopter blades “who sends a f***ing postcard in the 21^st Century?”

“It will all be fine!” Al yelled back in that reassuring way of his “everything will sort itself out Smudge old chum – I’m here to stay now – we all are – so let’s make the best of it.”

“Smudge?”  

It seems Al had got his old friends mixed up. Smudge was someone else, which gave us all a good laugh – with the exception of Seymour. 

BJ was insistent on putting up the tent ‘himself’ and set about organising everyone to do just that:

“It’s all very easy. We take it out of the packaging, slam it into the croquet lawn, prick it with some tent pegs. Job done.”

What Carrie Did Next Chapter One

Otto English

Fifteen minutes later he’d lost interest and was building a bus out of a courgette box he’d found in an adjoining vegetable garden. He does have a very short attention span but this is typical of a ‘brilliant mind’ – or at least that’s what he says.

Al has such energy. When not watching television he’s forever missing phone calls or making plans for further weekend breaks. There’s a terribly hurtful meme thing that does the rounds on social media where people ask “Where’s Boris?” Whenever some crisis arises and it drives me bonkers. Like he should be doing something you know, simply because he’s a Prime Minister in the midst of a major global pandemic! Sometimes I feel like yelling:

“I know where he is! He’s right here!” Wherever we then are. But what’s the point? It’s so much easier to criticise than to take time to study his itinerary and the many things he has achieved.

The trade deal with Liechtenstein, the staggeringly low death rate on COVID-19, the U-turn on exam results, the new curtains that he helped me hang in the Number 10 flat before he lost interest and made an airplane out of a PG tips packet instead.  

BJ is determined to make this country a better place – for him and his chums and I find that so inspiring. Whether making his brother Jo and his old boss Charles Spencer Lords, or the wonderful Claire Fox a Lady, he is trying to forge a more meritocratic society.

Al felt all the raking up of that poor woman’s revolutionary past was particularly insidious and born out of bitterness and envy. After all, as he pointed out at least one of the Mitford sisters was a communist in her youth and it was never held against her.

Such a brilliant mind.

On the first night, it rained and so we all decamped to Seymour’s house which is where I’m writing this. In the next room, I can hear Al laughing heartily at an old episode of Some Mothers Do Ave ‘Em while Seymour hammers on the door demanding to be let in to ‘discuss things’.

Do fill me in on news of the twins and give my love to Bertie. When this hell is over we shall meet again – hopefully in somewhere civilised like Mustique.

In the meantime,

Carrie