Good afternoon dears, it's Binky here.

I hope you are all well despite the wave of election fever sweeping the nation. It's most depressing to turn on the tellybox  expecting an episode of Midsummer and have your evening blighted by some half wit pretending to give off a whiff of the working class whilst oozing Waitrose like ripe Camambert. It was ever thus , I remember Harold Wilson  pushing past me in  the queue at Fortnums's food hall, clutching a tin of foie gras like his life depended on it, the following evening he was on Parkinson extolling the virtues of a Fray Bentos pie and piccalilli. I have no faith in the lot of them and will be most glad when it's all over and I can enjoy Bargain Hunt again.

In the meantime at The Big Fandango Michelle has been experimenting with holiday hats  so Rebecca has instructed me to write something appropriate on the subject. Of course when I think of holiday hats my immediate thought  was of a cruise around South America in 1973 with my dear friend Cynthia involving an unfortunate incident with a sombrero. We had  stopped off at Acapulco and against my better judgement had been persuaded to go on a donkey trek along the lower slopes of the Sierre Madre mountains. One of our party was an investment banker from Kent called Derek and his wife Marjorie who due to a chronic migraine condition wore large sunglasses and a sombero. Cythia's donkey was a tad frisky and had took a shine to the tassles on Marjorie's poncho and kept trying to nip at them in an amorous fashion. The poor woman had got tired of the constant nipping and tried to shoo it away with her sombrero but this only served to egg the donkey on and in a frenzied attack it snatched Marjorie's poncho and  the hat in it's teeth, escaped it's leash and ran off into the  mountains. It took the tour guide several hours to retrieve the beast by which time the afternoon was over ! The donkey still had bits coloured straw in it's teeth and bits of ravaged poncho about it's person and seemed altogether quite pleased with himself!

I did keep in touch with Derek and Marjorie for a while as we had a mutual friend Julian who was very big in the Home Counties amateur dramatic circuit, . Anyhoo, on the subject of elections, Derek actually stood for election himself for the Conservatives and was an MP for several years before some awful scandal  involving  accusations of foul play in a guess the weight of the cake competition at a Scout Christmas fundraiser. We lost touch after that  which was a shame as Marjorie was quite good fun and afer a few sweet sherries could do quite amazing imressions, I recall her doing a very good Shirley Bassey , Princess Anne too but her Dennis Healey was just uncanny!

Of course you won't be making Mexican hats so have no fear of any unnecesary altercations with wild beasts! Apparently it's bucket hats they are making, think sitting outside in the sunshine watching the tennis  or snoozing in the garden with a G and T and packet of pork scratchings . All sounds very splendid to me and of course should you wish to make your own you can join the Fandango lot and book yourself on one of their workshops.

Well I must head off, it's Friday night and I have a Dick Francis on the go and a Scotch egg and half a bottle of advocat hidden in the airing cupboard which Rebecca knows nothing about!

ta ta for now!

Binky!