A Listening Administration

The gadding continues, although the end is in sight: yesterday I was in Edinburgh for the day, partially camapaigny stuff, but mostly meeting up for lunch and attempting to cram several years’ worth of catch up gossip with two old school friends into a couple of hours. Having talked ourselves almost hoarse, and finished with a cheeky half (at four in the afternoon! The decadence!) in the pub in the station, I got on the train home to find I had seated myself opposite the leader of the coonsil, also on his way home from what sounded like a much less fun afternoon.

He gave me the slightly hunted look all politicians must reserve for the moment when one of their local single-issue activists has managed to corner them somewhere with no hope of escape for at least an hour. He manfully managed to connect my face to my cause, which is pretty impressive, and even bravely raised the subject of cycling, but I had work to do and to be honest he looked pretty worn out and did mention quite sadly that the weekend before he had been at some event in Glasgow and ended up next to someone from the area who spent the whole evening moaning to him about the state of the schools. I suppose it’s par for the course – especially round here – and part of the job and all that but I’m just not ruthless enough to spend a whole train journey talking some poor local politician into the ground even in the cause of cycling. Plus I’m pretty sure that promises made under those conditions would count as ‘duress’…

So he got to have his journey in mostly peace and quiet, and I got a bit of work done as planned, and we left on good terms which will hopefully stand me in good stead when I really need to bend his ear over something. Or maybe I’m just going soft in my old age. Time will tell.