Sunday

To Brig o’Dread, my Highland retreat. A cold coming I had of it – just the worst time of year for a journey – but a good fire soon takes the chill of the old place, and I sit writing this by the hearth in a panelled room decorated with the heads of stags and Conservative junior ministers. I have come North today because of the events of last week: for the first time that anyone can remember, I failed to win the Liberal Moustache of the Year Award, finishing second to John Thurso. How could this happen? I decided to visit the Highlands to find out.

Monday

Dawn breaks late in Caithness at this time of year; the icy sky is dotted with wheways flying north (or possibly with hamwees flying south). I am grateful for the warm glow of the Dounreay atom plant as I wait in the scrub on the hillside above it, observing the comings and goings through field glasses. As I take a nip of Auld Johnston from my hipflask, a familiar figure hoves into view – and no one, in my experience, can hove like the Liberal Democrat Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross. There is something different about him, however: on his upper lip he sports, not the effulgent growth that won the silver cup last week, but a wizened little thing that might have been worn by the amusing Blakey from On the Buses or the considerably less amusing Adolf Hitler. I capture Thurso’s likeness in this state with my trusty Box Brownie, and snap him again when he emerges two hours later, warmly shaking the hand of the manager of the atom plant and once again wearing the moustache that beat me into second place. So now I know how he grows it: nuclear waste.

Tuesday

I take my photographs to the chemist’s, and while they are being developed I watch what I now believe to be hamwees flying north (or perhaps they are wheways that have had a look at the Orkneys, thought better of them and decided to come south again). On the long drive south, I hear my Bentley’s engine making a strange whistling sound. Eventually I stop in the upper Tyne Valley and lift the bonnet. What should I find underneath but a wheway and a hamwee (or possibly a hamwee and a wheway) hitching a lift. By the time I have loaded my twelve-bore they have flown clean away. In my opinion, Sir Peter Scott has a great deal to answer for.

Wednesday

Home again at Bonkers Hall, I telephone to Menzies Campbell to see what has been going on in my absence and to offer him my usual sage counsel. How refreshing it is to have someone of my own generation at the helm once again! You may recall that I had to rescue Ming from his more enthusiastic young supporters during the campaign and bring him back to Rutland for a little rest and recuperation. (I also rescued his Jaguar from a barn in the Borders, but that is another story). I advised him not to take part in any more of the hustings but rather to send Clegg instead, as he was so terribly keen. I am pleased to report that Ming took my advice, with the result that he won the contest comfortably. He invites me to dinner on Sunday, and says that if there is ever anything he can do to help me, I should not hesitate to mention it.

Thursday

Indulging myself after my chill sojourn in Scotland, I take coffee in my Orchid House. Reading the morning’s papers, I find that poor Dick Cheney has shot a friend after mistaking him for a quail. Really, it could happen to anyone. I then spend the day browsing in the Library. One of the things I turn up is the notorious “Schoolkids” issue of Liberator ; this caused quite a stir in its day, and reading it now I can quite see why. It is pretty radical stuff: a ban on Gregory Powder; long trousers at 12; a Royal Commission on bedtimes. I also hunt down something that I have had in mind ever since I began to read those stories about the Middle East being in flames over the publication of some cartoons in a Danish newspaper. Eventually I find it: the controversial Fred Bassett strip that caused riots across the South of England in 1962.

Friday

It seems like yesterday, but by my calculation it was 1906, when the first Labour members were returned to the House of Commons. Had Herbert Gladstone taken my advice, there would have been no pact with them and we should all have been a great deal better off, but let that pass. It happened that one evening, shortly after we had all been elected, I went back into the chamber to look for a lost spat, only to find all the Labour members having their photograph taken. That photo has become quite an historic document, and if you look carefully you can see me in it, asking Keir Hardie if he would kindly look under his seat. It happens that this afternoon I visit Westminster and take the opportunity to slip into the Commons chamber to gather more evidence against John Thurso and his unethical ways of improving his moustache. What should I find but all the Labour MPs having their likeness taken again? Funnily enough, I appear in this one too, asking a couple of the ladies if they can see somewhere for me to plug in my Geiger counter.

Saturday

Dinner with the Campbells – Ming and the redoubtable Elspeth, who was so memorably played by Sean Connery in A Bridge Too Far. Conversation turns to the composition of Ming’s first Shadow Cabinet, and names are bandied back and forth across the table. When the name of John Thurso is raised, I find myself obliged to produce my photographs – the one of him entering Dounreay looking like a Belgian bank clerk and the one, taken two hours later, of him emerging with a moustache of Olympic class. Ming, being a gentleman, quite understands that this sort of thing Simply Isn’t Done. It therefore comes as no surprise that, when I pick up tomorrow’s first editions on the way home, they announce that there is no place for Thurso in his team of ministers.

Lord Bonkers, who was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West, opened his diary to Jonathan Calder.