My future as a reality TV star

Magpies have long been thought to be birds of omen. I am not superstitious. Yet during the election campaign I could not help but notice single magpies all the time. Perhaps you only notice what you are looking for, as from the beginning of the campaign the polls were clear that I would lose North East Somerset and Hanham. I wrote to my boarding school children when the election was called to warn them of the impending defeat, but unfortunately they cannot read my handwriting.

Throughout the campaign, the mood on the doorstep was excellent and the team full of beans. Many visitors came to help and I regularly had people staying overnight. This always makes elections fun, but there is less time for reading than you might expect. One of my sisters is giving me Jonathan Sumption’s wonderful and gripping multi-volume history of the Hundred Years War, and gave me another volume for my birthday in late May. I hoped to read it with six weeks at home in Somerset, but the exertions of canvassing made P.G. Wodehouse too tempting. So I went back to the Uncle Fred stories. Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, is one of Wodehouse’s funniest creations and a great tonic after work.

People in Somerset are wonderfully good-natured, even those who would never vote for a Conservative, let alone me. It is a different world from the bile and ill temper of social media. We are a good-natured country and it is safe for politicians to walk about unaccompanied. This is a real strength of our democracy, and we must not allow the fake fury of the internet to influence us too much.