Milestones and nostalgia

so today was a day of firsts -- first shower (no I have been showering but not able to get into a shower so have turned a bathroom into an impromptu wet room); first exposure of wound to the world -- and it basically just looks as though I had a close encounter with a rose bush - and not even any stitches; but the definite highlight was first trip to the pool to join my mother and other pensioners for an afternoon bounce in the pool. The big plus of the pool is that you don't need crutches - and after a couple of weeks of being on crutches (and another six to come) that feels like real liberation...

so that is the exciting view from Chichester - otherwise have been indulging in a burst of nostalgia reading Alastair Campbell's diary entries for 1996. Apart from his schoolboy crush on Princess Di (and her apparent keenness on him -- that could have been really interesting and changed the course of history...), the main interest comes from recollections of being on the other side as Ken Clarke's press secretary. It brings home very clearly why opposition is no preparation for government (the explanation Robert Reich gives for Clinton's - Bill not Hillary - false start =- "Governing is not campaigning") since all they seem to do is agonise about speeches, managing loose cannon Shadow Cabinet members and taking phone calls from Alan Clark (one of the less predictable relationships). Salutary to realise how little the Blair team was focusing on the Tories... and that the great 1996 Budget leak doesn't even warrant a mention from AC. Just reached the bit where they are crowing over KC's indiscreet lunch with Jon Sopel after discovering that the "friends of.... " comments were from the man himself. A localised nadir in my time as Press Secretary as when No10 went ballistic we discovered that our video recorder (no i-players in 1996) had failed to tape the lunchtime news when the BBC broke the story. Moral high ground recovered when I reminded a mildly raging KC (your press office is so incompetent you can't even work a tape recorder...) that we had advised him not to have lunch with Sopel etc (and would have also said not to be ferociously indiscreet sitting at the next table to Frank Dobson).

Haven't got to my one mention yet -- clearly didn't make as big an impact as Princess Di.