Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Should a Tory candidate have to do his own gardening?

The lack of posts this week says something about the pace at which the parliamentary campaign has taken off. Between ward work, the media and canvassing there hasn't bene much time for blogging. However this week is Half-Term and Louise has forced me to address the total disaster zone that is the garden.

Hence, this morning I could be found in old jeans and scruffy top lugging whole sections of my garage and garden into a skip. As I was pulling one of my least attractive faces, pushing the last of what once passed as a buddleia into a tiny crack between a brick and a plank of wood with nails sticking out, a friends who lives at the end of the road passed by.

"Ey, what have we here?" he proclaimed, as if it wasn't blatantly obvious enough. "Our local Tory candidate doing his own garden? Can't see Mr Clarke digging his own plot!" - no, I thought, launching a plot or whispering one, but never digging it. I then took a few moments of abuse before he finished with, "at least I can vote for somebody who knows how to get their hands dirty!".

I didn't know what to be more shocked about; that he was voting for me after admitting previously to being a LibDem, or the fact that he was genuinely amazed I did my own DIY and gardening.

Do other candidates get away with this? I also wash clothes, clean baths, put out the bin and even go to work. Is the land stalked with other PPCs who don't do this sort of stuff anymore? Or has the public's perception of politicans now moved so far from the truth that we are all tarnished with the nose-in-trough stereotype of the worth excesses of the Westminster MP?

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