Car rally

I spent all day at the Stornoway car rally watching the racers drive at very high speed, making sharp turns and reversing into very tight places.

I was amazed at how fast they can go, and I must confess I got very dizzy at the excitement and sense of danger as they whizzed through the crowds oblivious to the risk to their own lives.

I went to renew my ticket, 20p for 1 hour was so very reasonable, and I asked the man standing beside the ticket machine just how long it was going to carry on for. "All day", he said, "This is Percival Square car park!"

Constituents spoken to: 1
People who recognised me: none
Highest speed reached in 'Dorothy', my trusty green Micra: 14 mph (I managed second gear!)

Outrageous comments

Voldemort has done it this time!

Kenny phoned to say that he was alleging that a politician on the island was gay, and that to protect my reputation he had arranged for the entire SNP branch (Murdo MacLeod, Donald Murdo MacLeod, Angus MacLeod, Leod MacLeod, Angus B MacNeil Murdo MacLean, Mary MacLeod, Mary Murdo MacLeod, Angusina MacLeod, Donaldina Angusina MacLeod, Murdina Donaldina MacLean and Timotheous MacLeod Jnr) to post comments denying that I was in any way gay!

I was so angry that I wept copiously into my silk Cinderella dressing gown.

I am not attracted to men in any way whatsoever. Nor am I attracted to women for that matter, except senile old women who like to hold me their bosom when I visit the retirement homes to explain in Gaelic why Mr Alex will ensure that the major socio-economic and demographic changes that he will personally ensure will happen will ensure that the children they can barely remember having will return to carry them on commodes of gold to the new palaces that the SNP will build for them on the shores of Loch Achmore, where the fleet of steamers bringing the exiles home will dock. Such a speech is usually appreciated with a rousing round of nose picking, loud appreciative farting and at least one resident passing out and losing their teeth.

Nor am I attracted in any way to mammals. Nor to marsupials. Nor to invertebrates. And certainly not to fish; fresh water or sea living.

Voldemort must now pay for making Kenny suspect me, and I have phoned HQ to get them to do anything and everything about it in a way that I can disown.

Thereafter, I will continue to lead a life of only slight sanctimonious piety as a veritable monk amongst the fallen, gazing onto the unwashed and unappreciative hordes as they vote me back in with ever increasing majorities, surrounded by a coterie of lightly oiled dusky young male party workers, specially flown in from Brazil to help me around the house by looking after my every whim.

Such lovely thoughts to take to bed. I just hope Alex and his 'girlfriend' are thinking of me too.

Pyjamas worn: Blue Dangermouse ones
Bottles of baby oil bought: 7
Constituents spoken to: None

Fisherman's AGM

Mr Angus told me that I had to go to Lochmaddy, which is in North Uist, for the Annual General Meeting of the Western Isles Fisherman's Association.

I had hoped that Captain Birdseye would be there, as I wanted to thank him for making some excellent fish-fingers which I often eat daily with ketchup and precisely 25 frozen peas, to ensure my five a day intake of vegetables. I send Mr Alex a monthly report on my diet, to show that I take the business of politics very seriously, and provide him with details and diagrams of my bowel motions, which record and chart weekly for size, density, colour and smell. Surprisingly, none of my colleagues seem to do this, which will certainly mark me out when the next reshuffle takes place and I will have a chance of becoming assistant apprentice junior under-secretary assistant with special responsibility for Gaelic books.

I was met at the door by the Chairman who asked who I was, and when I explained he reassuringly told me that I would fit in perfectly as I was an 'odd fish', which is most definitely a compliment coming from a fisherman.

I listened carefully to the detailed debates on prawns, nets, seaweed and how to catch kippers for a mere 4 hours, nudging Mr Angus occasionally to keep him awake. I took plenty of notes for both Mr Angus and I, but looking back at the notes I have absolutely no idea what they were talking about. I will ask Kenny to write a press release as he knows more about this than I do.

At the end of the meeting I had to speak so I told all the fishermen about Mr Alex's plan to personally ensure that all the fish were allowed to be caught only by local boats and that he was working literally 24 hours a day 7 days a week to ensure that the prawns were no smaller than 1 stone each. They were stunned by my revelations, and as I read the speech that was carefully written for me by Kenny, they were rapt and open-mouthed as I recited the landings for 1996 by species, port and weight and compared then to the landings for 2006 clearly showing that the Labour Party had been wholly responsible for the reduction in fish in the sea as clearly shown by the statistics for megrim landed at Northbay, namely; in 1996 2 megrim were landed by FV "Bottom Wind" CY99 weighing a total of 17lbs whilst in 2006 only 1 megrim was landed by the local boat "Seniorita Esperanza MacNeil" CY99 weighing a total of 15lbs. This clearly shows that Jack McConnell and Alasdair Morrison had deliberately destroyed the fishing leaving fishermen impoverished, children without food on the table and mothers destitute and having to sell their bodies and babies to passing tourists on the pier at Castlebay in order to fund a passage, steerage class, to Glasgow where they would have to work in domestic service for fifty years as part of the new Highland Clearances.

I was able to reassure them that landings this year included 17 boxes of fresh smoked mackerel straight to the Co-op, up from 16 the year before, indicating that the SNP would deliver on it's policy of 'fish for everyone, whether they like it or not.'

Then Mr Angus regaled the audience with stories of catching crabs. The first story was of his youth in Barra, when he built the first million-pound trawler ever seen on the west coast out of old fish boxes and bits of machinery lying around the croft, and how he used to dive without oxygen for hours at a time hand picking the crabs for shipping to the finest restaurants in the world. The second story had something to do with Amsterdam, a German woman, and liberal doses of ointment.

Shortly after, Mr Angus had to go away as he had something 'hooked', and left with a young lady he met in the bar who presumably was driving him to his next appointment.

I had to catch the ferry, and headed for Lewis. As I sat on the ferry I entertained all the fishermen with my stories, certainly they were laughing at everything I said. As we docked, one of the skippers said "I hear you like bottom fishing when you are in Edinburgh. Do you often get bites on your worm?", which just goes to show how little attention he paid to my stories.

As the last bus had already gone, I stood on the main road and thumbed a lift back to Stornoway, waving to all the fishermen as they drove past, whilst I stood in the drizzle waiting for a car to come along. I was back in Back within three hours, after another successful day.

Fishermen spoken to: 23
Lifts thumbed: 2
Speeches read without many mistakes: 1

Tesco

Kenny is just back from the new supermarket that has opened in Stornoway. Apparently they are called 'Tesco' and they have stores everywhere like Inverness, Wick and as far afield as Perth.

Kenny has long been a stalwart of the Cross Stores, who do his staple foods such as 40 Embassy, McCain Oven Ready Hedgehog rings, seagull drumstick skewers, Paralytic Piper whisky and red diesel.

Rhona had instructed him to go to the Tesco to buy supplies for the office and he hands over the 27-pack of extra-value extra-thin toilet roll, a jar of Tesco value Barra coffee - grown with the finest Arabica beans on the west facing slopes of the island - Tesco value sugar (reduced in price due to being slightly damp), a box of 240 tea-bags, a bottle of mint julep Domestos, and 72 'Blu-loo' tablets. Rhona hands over the £1.72 from petty cash, and I keep the receipt to claim against my expenses. The copy receipt is put onto Mr Angus' desk for him to claim also.

Conspiratorially, Kenny pulls me out to the car by my sleeve, where I sit in a fug of Embassy smoke and on a pile of dog-ends that are some two feet deep. Kenny always changes his car when the dog-ends reach to the roof.

He opens a second Tesco bag and he eyes open with wonder as he shows me his purchases. He drools slightly, but that is normal, so I pay attention to what he has bought, and even I am taken aback at the range of produce the new shop has.

• Roast badger and wildcat cheese baguette
• Hooper swan bhajis
• Pickled herring in chilli flavoured Castrol GTX
• Polar bear jerky
• Larks tongues (bags of 20)
  
• Thin cut dolphin slices
  
• Silverside of Polar Bear
  
• Penguin wings in aspic

He drags me to the back of the car and opens the boot to show me a 5 gallon value pack of Tesco "Old Bombay" whisky. "£7.50", he muttered, "Now go tell the headmistress that I have a migraine and I've gone home early. This little lot", he said stroking the drum and grinning lasciviously at the food, "will probably see me through the weekend." With that he pressed a package into my hands, closed the boot and sped off leaving nothing but the faint air of Embassy and a mountain of fag ash to show that he had ever been there.

As I went back to the office to type up his press releases and do his filing, I looked into the package and I forgave him for the toxic fumes and spittle on my lapels. It is just so long since I had the circular slices of ham with a smiling face made out of contrasting processed ham. What a wonderful day. I shall have a tin of alphabetti spaghetti with it to celebrate.

Time to wash smell of smoke off me: 2 hours
Highest speed on the way home: 27 mph (well I was excited)
Message spelt with alphabetti spaghetti: Alex Salmond is the best Kenni is veri nice Rona is a