With friends like these

Many readers will know that I am on enforced bed rest at home, convalescing from a routine hernia operation last Saturday.  Bored witless, unable to walk any distance and barred from driving, I am catching-up on a backlog of reading and haranguing my friends on social media in search of sympathy.

On hearing I was incapacitated, one kindly lady from the north posted:

I am not sure if my photograph led her to assume that I was due a hip or knee operation, or whether the average Conservative activist is so surrounded by fellow geriatrics, that it was a natural assumption!

This of course, opened the floodgates

Then my good friend Matthew Plummer Matthew Plummer, on reading that I was considering watching a YouTube re-run of the 1987 GE Campaign kindly emailed me a link which he thought I might find of interest. It was a recording of the 1996 Municipal Election results for Wellington Central in New Zealand. 

Apparently if I watched carefully I would be able to see a flash of his shoes. 

I have suddenly and unpleasantly glimpsed my retirement - stuck in bed with painkillers and a bad hip and watching re-runs of Kiwi election results programmes from 1996, eagerly anticipating a glimpse of Matthew Plummer's shoes.