I am awake all night with the pain in my liver and the angst in my soul. I had never planned on getting a conscience in retirement and I don’t know which is more uncomfortable. My brother Wiz (so called because he is the brains of the family and was a boy genius) has been on the blower, his boss is driving him up the wall and he’s going to commit murder apparently if he ever gets out. I can smell the seething down the phone and it sounds like he is about ready to explode.

Wiz goes on to explain the concept of home-working I have heard so much about. Like Mitzi (of whom more presently) it appears that many of my fellow countrymen can move their desks into the spare room, hook up a talking camera and bombard the World with the same amount of professional b*llshit it enjoyed before the blight – or very nearly.

In Wiz’s case he is suffering from the age old problem of an incompetent leader. I should know – I used to be one.

I don’t really know what to say to him in the middle of my own existential crisis, and without lashings of electric soup I’m pretty dysfunctional in the old grey matter department – which is why I used to take all those long lunches…

… And speaking of lunch, Mitzi has been a bit of rock since I got home. Making me lunch and dinner and plumping up my pillows, she has been a proper Florence Nightingale, billing and cooing over me like a favourite maiden Aunt.

Mind you the whole thing is a bit surreal, she usually tends to my earthly needs dressed in her work costume of stockings, suspenders and some of Anne Summer’s premium underwear sets with lots of french lace and tassels. It’s a bit unsettling I can tell you being fed spicy chowder on a plastic spoon by FiFi Lafemme, but the pain in my back and the super massive pain-killers are keeping all thoughts of a Ugandan nature quiet, so I am getting used to the sight of her wandering around dressed for virtual bacchanalia. It is certainly adding some spice to my soup – I can tell you…

Having driven myself into a blue funk over the soup we find ourselves in, and then trying to drive the demons away with fortified spirits, I found myself confined to the county infirmary while matron and her fellow medicos pumped out my liver.

Matron was actually a lovely bloke called Deacon who liked a wager and wasn’t too judgmental about how I had got myself into this mess. In fact neither were any of the nursing team apart from one bolshie miss who thought I could be spending my time more usefully than drinking myself to death. Her comments just illustrate the folly – and optimism – of youth I’m afraid.

While my body was being pumped full of saline – and disinfectant for all I know – my spirit was somewhat restless at the sheer industry of it all. How bloody important all these medicos were to my continued well-being – and every other patient’s. It made what I had done my whole life seem like cheating to get such a relatively large reward for such little useful output.

I am not apologizing for what I have managed to achieve in life. I have so little talent that had I needed to live on my wits I would have starved, so I made the best of what I was given; my family connections, a sound education and an ability to hold my liquor and my tongue. But all the gewgaws, junkets and over-indulgences that came to me, arrived because that is how the system works. Not for the benefit of mankind, but for the benefit of men (and some women) who control and maintain that system.

As I lay in bed watching the toing and froing it dawned on me that the system is wrong because the rewards are going to the wrong people. My friend Pitt-Quicker spends more on his monthly wine bill than most of those Nightingales spend on an annual mortgage if they can get one. And where does P-Q get his cash? From taking a turn off the investments that make up the retirement incomes a lot of these people probably won’t ever claim if the soup we are all in gets any thicker.

P-Q would say it is a responsible job minding large pots of other people’s cash, but he has an army of other ranks to do the sums for him, starts work when he feels like it and if everything goes south – as currently – it’s not his pension or livelihood in the wringer – just his bonus. His treasure is all buried on distant palmy beaches or in the armoured vaults of the banking Kremlin. And while losing his bunce may make some waiters in Mayfair and Paris weep, it’s hard to feel sorry for a man who can watch the whole issue burn to the ground from his luxury shack in the Caribbean.

But what really troubled my soul was that whenever we pulled off a sharp deal, or turned a neat trick that made us a King’s ransom, we would call each other ‘Hero’s’ and award ourselves fine food and wine to celebrate our status.

We use the word hero a lot in life, for all sorts of people in all sorts of situations, especially on grub street. But I now know what that word really means: someone who puts the lives and welfare of others first, in spite of the fear and danger to themselves, because that’s what they have signed up for and that’s what they will do however incompetent their leaders appear to be.

For the first time in my life I saw real heroes at work in that Infirmary.

For God’s sake you bunch of useless w*nkers in Government – get these people the kit they need to do their jobs safely. They need supplies not promises.

The old guy disinfecting the floor at night in the ward is more use than any of Bojo’s circus troop. And tragically has done more for other people than I ever will – wealth creator or not.

I largely don’t have a clue what has been happening to me – or anybody else – while I was taking the cure. If anyone knows what I have been doing over the last few weeks please write care of this postbox.

But the country – I see from the daily rag – is still in a nosedive. The lists of the dead are coming in like battlefront reports and the ruling prefects are getting mugged by Grub Street at every turn. Not that they don’t deserve it. They are more incompetent than I am. Fancy making promises on things that can be tallied! Any greenhorn should see that one coming. Quotes like: ‘we’ll have a million gas masks here by Friday’ and ‘a zillion blight finders by Christmas’ are bound to land them in hot water. The problem is the grub street reptiles can check up on these things and see exactly how short our leaders are coming up.

This – I have decided – is the fundamental problem with politics. As soon as a policy is measurable it’s no bloody good. Because it’s a cheap promise but an expensive failure… All the chickens they fire at the voters usually take years to come home to roost – by which time everyone but a few obsessives have forgotten all about them. But under the current spotlight the normal guff our leaders are spouting isn’t standing up. They need a new approach – telling the truth would be a start – but the old order has served them well, so they are not about to ditch a habit of a lifetime.

Which is unfortunate because at the moment the Government’s performance looks worse than my liver function tests. And those results are so bad I may as well have been drinking Drano as per that idiot Trump’s suggestion. It would have saved me a fortune at Pomeroy’s prices!

Stephen Oliver Bulk is definitely unwell. It took so much Gin to drown the horrors of yesterday’s huddle with my ex-class-mates that my liver has gone on strike. Funny the things that let you down in a crisis….

I shall be away for a well earned break, while I coax my liver back to work.

I’m on a thing called a video conference with my cohorts, Swinefever, Ginger Bork, Astral Martin & Pitt-Quicker … And we all agree things are pretty bleak. Yes there’s the whole people dying thing, but the circle of life and all that, however the economy has tanked and that is bad news for everyone’s finances. The elephant in the imaginary room is that no one is allowed to say their bonus is more important than human lives, but it’s what we are all thinking….

The counter argument is that poverty and neglect may well kill more than the blight ever could and if Pitt-Quicker can”t buy his new Ferrari then hundreds in Maranello will starve. While it is true that P-Q could survive on a lot less money and his work bears no relation to his value to anyone but himself and a few cronies, the fact remains he is a wealth creator and the obscene amount he earns spreads the wealth to wine merchants, Italian tailors, over-priced ski resorts and luxury car-makers – like you wouldn’t believe. If P-Q goes down we all sink with him… mainly because he’s got my pension in an offshore fund somewhere.

After the call I sit and ponder the meaning of life and conclude we are a hard-hearted bunch – us City types – only concerned with our own comfort and well-being as long as we don’t get caught. Not perhaps the best motives to run the country’s cash machines with, or the World’s come to think of it.

In my case I’m ex-officio of course. I was excused employment once they started demanding the chosen were competent to fill their desks. They didn’t actually fire me for incompetence, it said ‘over-staffing’ on the letter, but we all knew what they meant. The whole bloody country was in the soup by then and I wasn’t going to get them out of it. Still, they sent me off with a small sack of gold and an adulterated pension, but no more feeding at the trough for me – and I’ve been tightening my belt ever since.

Which was fair enough. I had blagged it for 30 years, moving between posts before the modesty of my professional talents caught up with me. The problem was of course there were too many people in the marble halls with limited abilities and that’s what led to the whole tea-trolley disaster of ’08, that and unconfined avarice. I didn’t see it coming for one minute, but then I couldn’t from the rear booth at Pomeroy’s or the Silver Ring at Ascot.

And now it looks like we are in the soup again. Admittedly it’s not the fault of my fellow croupiers this time, but the blow that has fallen on us all has fallen on them and they like to think they are above all earthly matters – being divine and all that.

P-Q, Bork and Swinefever were all looking distinctly shifty on the call whenever the state of the markets was mentioned. I gradually realized it was a look of genuine fear on their faces. And these were players who cleaned up in ’08 while most of the cognoscenti were running around like headless chickens. Seeing the fear in their eyes put the wind up me I can tell you. And AM – who owns more factories than I have brain cells – looked whiter than a sheet.

It has taken a plague of biblical proportions to wipe the usual smug look off their faces, and I can’t help admitting that is giving me a certain sense of satisfaction, to see them humbled a bit. But on the other hand I can’t get the look of fear in their eyes out of my head, no matter how much Gin I drink.

On the domestic front Mitzi has taken command of the bunker. I am not sure when I ceded control or if I ever had it in fact. It is my house and my life Mitzi has come to visit, but that doesn’t seem to carry any weight when it comes to making decisions. The spare room – formerly repository to my lifetime’s memorabilia – is now a gym stroke ‘sex parlour’ where Mitzi spends a lot of time with the door shut. The lounge ceiling gives frequent testimony to the industrial activities often in train – but whether these are all occupational or recreational I couldn’t say.

On the professional front – money and more particularly rent – haven’t been discussed and inquiries on the subject in her direction are met with a curt ‘we’ll see’ which in my experience of the fairer sex means: No.

I have been given instructions on various aspects of my domestic affairs concerning: sleeping arrangements (I’m on the sofa); cooking (I’m on KP); cleaning (I’ve been instructed to find mother’s old hoover), sanitary habits (regular showers & sitting down for a pee); Storage (de-cluttering the aforementioned spare room) and Television preferences (whatever Mitzi wants to watch).

I consider myself an easy-going sort generally, but I have to say the Greek Mrs Bucket is stretching my patience somewhat thin… I have thought about throwing her out, but apart from the fact that wouldn’t be the act of a Gentleman, I would have to say she has probably 20 years on me and as well as being a disciple of daily exercise is also in possession of a mean streak I wouldn’t want to voluntarily cross.

So I am in effect a prisoner in my own home – albeit with all my home comforts and enough booze to sink the Duke of Edinburgh, a gilded cage – even if I don’t want to voluntarily share it. Who knows – if Mitzi isn’t inclined to pay any rent maybe she will settle her bill in kind? We’ll see…

I wake up this morning in a complete fog and when I find my way out the Media is full of bile and angst. We sons and daughters of Albion are a funny lot. We know we are entitled to be treated and behave better than every other tribe in the World, but when the time comes to face up and put our money where our stiff upper lips are… we never quite carry it off. We tend to think that rules, regulations and common sense are for other people to abide by, and we’re not slow in pointing the finger when we think another person is out of line, but we never quite behave properly ourselves, principled in spirit, but not so much in practice…

From scrum-downs in the souks and bazaars, to checking out the level of bat flu among our sainted health workers, to keeping our distance from our fellow convicts, we never quite reach the heights of success we think – as a nation – we are entitled to… And then it’s always somebody else’s fault… Usually the authorities or some arcane foreign tribe or wizards of commerce practicing dark magic behind our backs…

Whenever common sense is publicly breached, my aged mother always tuts and says ‘Why don’t THEY do something…’ whoever ‘they’ are… And then when a new rule or regulation comes flying out of the ether to address same, she says ‘Who do THEY think THEY are telling me what to do?’ It’s not clear who ‘THEY’ are but in the case of unwarranted interference it is usually anyone from Brussels, HMG Ministers she doesn’t like the look of or local councilors she didn’t vote for because it was raining.

Whenever the great unwashed talk about democracy in hallowed terms I always think about the petty bureaucracy that makes our lives tick and how much we as a Nation resent it. Just read the chattering classes on the Internet..

I am completely foxed by Pomeroy’s finest electric soup and am going to lie down for a rest… As a famous magazine once had it: Jeffery Barnard is Unwell… That goes for me too…

I think Team Bojo is carrying the Churchillian motif a shade too far. We now have a Civil Service mannequin exhumed from a 1940’s Public Service Broadcast on the idiot box, intoning a warning for the great unwashed to keep their distance and obey all the rules. He is apparently the ‘Government Chief Medical Officer’, which has more than a whiff of Porton Down about it and he has the prerequisite chinless misery in front of the camera.

He reminds me of John Betjeman’s Nanny telling us to say our prayers before we go to bed and it all seems strangely out of step with modern times. Even Mitzi noticed it and said he was the sort of punter she normally charges double because of their unusual requests.

I don’t know who thought putting Dr Crippen on show was a good idea, but with the mop-topped Prefect confined to the infirmary with the blight I do wonder who is in charge… Whoever is pulling the strings lacks a certain sparkle and is getting caught with their trouser’s down over the prophylactics for nurses fiasco. The government apparently says they’ve got the anti-plague kits coming out of their ears, the medico’s and staff on the front-line are asking where are they then? No doubt on Rishi Sunak’s e-bay account at 4 times the price to help balance the books for all the free gold HMG are promising to the poor, oppressed, confined masses.

I would believe Matron over the Headmaster any day, so if the medico’s say they are not getting the gas masks and camphor oil then HMG look pretty shabby saying otherwise!

But that is just about par for the course with this shower of elected buffoons. Boris doesn’t have much bottom at the best of times and although he fancies himself as the new Churchill, at the first sign of trouble he seems to be somewhere else… Maybe I am being too harsh, but the Leaderene of Blessed memory or the old British Bulldog himself wouldn’t let a little thing like the bat flu slow them down for a minute.

I know Bojo is supposed to be practicing what he preaches and staying out of harm’s way, but he is not renowned for sticking by the rules and what’s wrong with using the idiot-box more? It’s probably no coincidence that just when he was getting a roasting from the daily hacks and other assorted n’re do wells at evening Prayers he gets a note from Matron saying he can’t come out and take his medicine.

I should know, I was always coming down with temporary conditions at school when a French vocab test was in the offing… I became an expert at dodging the more demanding moments of school life and I see the same streak in our uninspiring head-boy. It takes one to know one!

Mitzi is dressed in what looks like one of Rod Stewart’s old cast off leopard print leotard’s and is jumping up and down and gesticulating in a strange fashion in front of her laptop. I assume at first she is at work on her sex site, but it turns out I am wrong. The fellow on the other end of the screen is not in fact a punter but a gym instructor called Joe Wickes. She is following his movements in a haphazard fashion and he has her flinging her bodily parts in all directions. I can’t decide whether to be amazed or appalled. Mitzi is not what might be called in some quarters ‘statuesque’ but I do fear for the integrity of the floorboards – especially as they became weakened after mother took up all-in-wrestling.

What’s worse is that my G&T is slopping about in it’s glass like the sea at Margate on a brisk day as Mitzi’s gyrations become ever more frenetic. I retreat hastily downstairs and batten down the hatches. Dust is flowing down from the ceiling in ever increasing clouds and I fear Mitzi may follow as the strain on the superstructure grows louder with every passing minute….

But just as suddenly as it started, it stops. Mitzi appears after sometime flushed, breathing heavily and sweating like mother did after she went the distance that time with the Phantom Grappler.

‘That Joe Wickes,’ she breathes huskily, ‘He sure knows how to show a girl a good time.’

Well quite….

I turn on the idiot box to discover that the Head Prefect’s new regulations to clear the great unwashed off the streets have gone straight to PC Plod’s head. With gay abandon the boys in blue are fencing off our green and pleasant land from the hordes and even in some cases turning it a distinctly unpleasant shade of black to dissuade any alfresco loafing.

How is it that when some local vagabond recently broke in to the Maison Bulk, during my night-time slumbers, and made off with my collection of mint condition World Cup petrol tokens, the flat-foots were too busy and too scarce to even come and dust the door-frame for clues? But when the prefect’s office issues the call to round up innocent by-standers and bundle granny back into her car and send her packing, there are regiments of the blighters deploying high-tech riot gear and poisoning the wells with black ink?

I know we all have to stay indoors and stop spitting on each other, but giving the rozzers the green light to interfere whenever they feel like it is asking for trouble in my book… It’s only a short step from this to sanctimonious bible-thumpers telling us all to straighten up and fly right if we want to lift the curse. Just the thought of it is enough to drive me straight to drink, thank God I don’t have far to go!