It would be fair to say that,as a bureaucrat, my natural environment is a clerical one. Envelope stuffing, leaflet batching, these are the tasks that this bureaucrat was designed to carry out.
And so I was pleased to discover on arrival at the headquarters of the Cardiff Liberal Democrat campaign, that there was clerical work to be done. I was reunited with my jacket, wallet, Oyster card and the Party mini camcorder in a touching ceremony, before throwing myself into a flurry of envelope stuffing on behalf of Dominic Hannigan, our candidate for Cardiff South and Penarth. There was plenty of banter and good humour as the pile of envelopes shrank, fuelled by some excellent tea and Bara Brith.
Campaigns require candidates, agents, canvassers and leaflet deliverers, the public face of a political party, if you like. However, there are some even more unsung characters, those who do the clerical work. They're often older members, who have experienced the vagaries of politics over decades, but who are less able to get about.
It helps if the tea is good, and I have to say that the two Jenny's, Willott MP and Randerson AM, make very good tea. It seems like a very long time since Jenny W was approved as a Parliamentary candidate (I was on that panel), but she's clearly aging better than I am. It was nice to meet Jenny R again. We got to know each other on last year's Liberal Democrat Friends of India delegation, and she's always good company.
Sadly, it was soon time to leave Cardiff, and head for the last stop of the weekend's tour, Newport...
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