Diary

The new year is little more than a week old and while everybody else is no doubt still righteously munching lettuce leaves, joining gyms and going teetotal, I’ve already broken Personal Resolution Number One: to reduce my carbon footprint. Barely off a Ryanair flight from Provence (where we’d spent New Year in freakishly hot sunshine, proof if ever it were needed of climate change), my boyfriend and I promptly boarded an easyJet plane to Morocco. OK, so I know the likes of Al Gore would have my guts for garters, but it’s a while since I’ve had a holiday and, given that it’s considerably cheaper to fly to Marrakech than get a train to Manchester, I’m afraid I succumbed.

Monday Happy New Year and May The Force Be With You in 2007! I think it’s fair to say that Dave’s brilliant message sent shivers down all our spines, mine included, even though I was in the office last week when Jed was writing it. V powerful stuff. If any of us were in any doubt of the seriousness of the battle ahead of us as Darth Vader prepares to take control of the Empire with his formidable band of Imperial Stormtroopers, then our leader’s words must surely galvanise us into a state of readiness. It can be no coincidence that Sky was showing the entire Star Wars saga from start to finish today. Got up at six to watch it from end to end.

New York The highlight of my year was undoubtedly interviewing George Clooney. I don’t mean to be star-struck, but in the presence of the square-jawed one my professional façade went Awol. The United Nations is usually a bit short on glamour, but on the day George came to talk about Darfur, a little bit of Hollywood rubbed off on my world. He swept in with an entourage of 50, including the compulsory bossy PR, who kept trying to interrupt and spoil my brief few minutes with George. He was, I can report, devastatingly well briefed on the Darfur peace agreement. ‘What was he like?’ asked Husband, casually, via email. I crossed my fingers, looked heavenward for guidance, and tapped back with great difficulty — ‘that look is so 2006’.

Last week, after years of the best possible intentions, I finally managed to make my virgin visit down under to sunny Sydney. With Elton fully ensconced in a fortnight of antipodean touring and work to be done promoting our new teen comedy It’s a Boy Girl Thing, I was able to justify the trip while hoping to overcome the abject terror of having to spend nearly 24 hours trapped on a plane. So many of my globetrotting mates have been slobbering on for ages about the genius of Singapore Airlines. Justifiably so, as I find myself awash with joy at being cocooned within the hedonistic splendour of their first-class cabin. My most challenging decision is between Dom Pérignon and Krug. Hordes of Asian beauties fluff your pillows, and they even swab out the loos after every use.

I despair. All this nonsense in the papers about Sam’s £300,000 bonus totally misses the point of everything we’ve been trying to explain for the past year. MONDAY I despair. All this nonsense in the papers about Sam’s £300,000 bonus totally misses the point of everything we’ve been trying to explain for the past year. For the last time, all you Thatcherites at the back, wealth is not about money. Wealth is not City bonuses or share windfalls. Wealth is the smile on the face of a child who gets to see Daddy before bedtime. Wealth is the smell of organic chicken slow-roasting in the oven of an environmentally sound yet affordable starter home.

Monday Trust Labour to go and apologise for the slave trade. The cheek of it! We played just as big a part, if not bigger, in the atrocities of Roots. It’s just as much ours to say sorry for, and Dave would have done it so much better. With real tears. Well, see if we care! Our man’s in Iraq sporting a flak jacket with panache and not looking like a constipated jellybaby — like certain people with clunking fists and the handwriting of a psychopath we could mention. It’s just so petty. No sooner do we announce that Churchill is ‘wholly inadequate’ (hello? statement of the obvious!) than Blair comes out with a measly historic U-turn of his own. Talk about desperate. He’ll be apologising for Iraq next. (We’re planning to do that next week!

MONDAY Life is just one long crisis. Big row over what to take to Sudan in Lord A’s jet. I just thought that a few Harrods hampers thrown in with the medical supplies might cheer people up a bit, although possibly I shouldn’t have forked out for them myself on my account card. (Have given up on ever paying it off now, no matter what Gideon says.) Then had to sort out hacks who were bored and demanding more ‘access’ before trip had even started. Told them, you’re on the jet, only ten rows down from Dave, and we’ve put you in the next best hotel to ours. What more do these people want? Jed says they won’t be happy until they’ve seen Dave break down in Di-style tears of empathy with the displaced multitudes.

MONDAY Fab write-ups of our top secret meeting with unions. (Another great U-turn!) Of course, what we couldn’t reveal is how embarrassing it was when they told Dave how fantastic he is. It was bordering on creepy. The guy from the Long List of Letters which have something to do with manual labour asked him to autograph his son’s hooded sweatshirt. ‘He’ll laugh his head off when he sees this.’ Honestly, how gauche! Couldn’t he have waited till the end and asked us to send him one like everyone else? Was a bit odd having all those lefties round. Lot of faffing trying to work out what to give them to drink. Poppy got into a right state trying to buy something called ‘real ale’.

Am sleeping on the bunk bed at Dave and Sam’s. The atmosphere is v tense. SUNDAY Am sleeping on the bunk bed at Dave and Sam’s. The atmosphere is v tense. We don’t know when they will come for us, but we know they will come and when they do we have to be ready. Miliband wasn’t ready, and look what happened to him. They found contact lens boxes and tin cans — tin cans! No doubt he was too busy thinking about policy to have someone check what was going into his bin — well, that is not going to happen to us. When the Mail and the Mirror come rummaging we will not be found wanting. Oh no. MONDAY Jed chased me out of kitchen this morning for frightening the children. Godammit — one of them dropped a piece of rainforest into the Brabantia!

MondayWe have to stop Gordon from stealing the environment! It was Dave’s idea to save the planet. It’s theft, pure and simple, what Labour is doing. Jed has written ‘Ownership’ in big green letters on the whiteboard. We’ve all got to come up with five ideas (why is it always five of everything in politics?) on how to remind people that tackling climate change was our policy in the first place.

MONDAY Confusion and misery. Everyone saying Dave has made his first mistake and, quite frankly, I’m beginning to think so myself. If I wasn’t a Cameroon from my Brora bobble hat to my King’s Road pedicure, I wouldn’t know what we stand for at the minute. It seems that people actually believe the policy commissions are producing ideas that are going to make it into our manifesto! This is one eventuality we hadn’t bargained for. I mean, how could we have predicted people would believe Dave is going to adopt £21 billion worth of tax cuts? Now we’re getting hammered by Mr Brown’s nasty people called Ed for promising things we never were going to promise. Actually. Only now we’re not going to get any votes for not promising them.