Outrage in the face of Euphoria

SHE'S not just being a bad loser

SHE'S not just being a bad loser. She has been on the edge of politics all her life - campaigning, you know, making sandwiches when needed, addressing envelopes - before computers, delivering leaflets since. Nothing official, no real role, just being supportive.

And it was so wonderful last time when they wrenched the seat in Hammersmith away from Labour. Mrs Bewildered doesn't think she and her friends were triumphalist about it. No braying or anything. No cries of a new dawn.

And truthfully, all that about the doorsteps was true literally every single person she met on a doorstep was voting Conservative. Mrs Bewildered doesn't know what to make of it. Why should people say life was good and then go and vote socialist on that sunny day?

It was a mystery.

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She lives in a garden flat. She is nice to everyone, she talks to people no matter what colour they are or how they are dressed. Her husband says this is the thanks you get for it - you're nice to people and then they turn on you like feral cats and bite you. He is very bitter about it all actually, and says they should have gone to live in Spain that time when they had the chance. Nothing for them here now. You can't trust people, he says, it's been proved over and over.

And what particular part of the democratic system does he find untrustworthy? Does he think they rigged the results? No, no, it's just the attitude, you see.

The other day they heard some boys chanting "Hague and Dorrell/Howard and Clark/Redwood, Lilley/What a lark".

It had made him so angry he lost his temper with the children, which was pointless really - you never win in the end if you fight with children, do you?

But what exactly was so wrong with their song? They were singing the names of the contenders for leader of the Tory party, that was all.

Well, precisely, but try telling her husband that.

You see he knew they were being insulting but how could you prove it? The children said their teacher told them to learn the names for next day and somebody had made up this verse to help them remember. They had all the answers - only 10 or 11 and already they knew everything.

And he was incensed that Cherie Blair had answered the door of her house in her nightgown - that's the kind of thing we have to look forward to now, he keeps saying.

It's fortunate he has a nice group of like minded people in his local pub, so be can let off steam.

It turns out that the woman who cleans their flat and her partner never a husband these days, always a partner you'll note well, anyway, they've had a baby girl and they are going to call her Euphoria. She was born on the day after the election and they think that's a suitable name. Honestly, Mrs Bewildered's husband hit the roof over that.

Mrs Bewildered, pouring oil on heavily troubled waters, said he shouldn't worry about it, they probably wouldn't be able to spell it anyhow and the child would end up being called Yoof or something like that. She thought this would help; make it all seem harmless; he might feel less threatened.

But no, it's not going away. He keeps pointing out how so much of his money went into educating these people and now they call their children Euphoria to celebrate the day the country went temporarily mad.

Mrs Bewildered says her husband is far from being a well man.

ERIC comes to London four times a year on a familiarisation trip. He says everyone on the trip puts on half a stone during the week. It's because they don't know here anywhere is, these places they're meant to be getting familiar with, so they crush into taxis, and they're so full of stress when they get out - late of course, after the heavy traffic - that they eat everything they can lay their hands on.

And London's full of temptation, Eric says. Places don't close early like they do in his home town.

Eric is the first to admit he's not a fitness freak, never one for jogging or the gym. But he says that in every fat young rep's life there is a moment of truth you see a picture of yourself with three chins or you glance at yourself in a restaurant mirror and think you are your own father ...

In Eric's case, the moment came when the neck button of his shirt flew off under the strain and nearly blinded the chief executive.

That, and frustration with London transport, made Eric call into a place that rented bicycles. He just walked into Bikepark near Covent Garden. It cost £30 a week, he was told. Eric would spend that in two days on taxis.

Great, he said, and banded over a deposit of £200. He cycled out of Bikepark rather uncertainly and looking a trifle wobbly. A man gave him a bit of advice. "Never stay on the left of a car, a bus or a van, mate. They'll turn and flatten you, without even seeing you.

Eric was taken aback. He could hardly command the middle of the road everywhere in a capital city. Apparently, what he should do is edge in front of vehicles at traffic lights so that when they go to turn he is in their line of sight.

So, timidly, Eric took to the London streets. He had to buy a map and plot out his journeys, but at least he knows where he is, and where he has been and that the taxi he passed 20 minutes ago has hardly moved.

With all the passion of the convert, he tells you he is in control now, rather than some outdated traffic system; he's not stuck in a machine that could go at 80 mph but is in fact moving at 2 mph; he says cyclists are not responsible for the carnage on the roads.

He knows not everyone thinks like he does. If you're trying to drive yourself, cyclists are often dangerous things snaking round you, recklessly; they are very galling as, they overtake your taxi, they look aggressively, fit and sometimes menacing in their masks against fumes.

But to Eric they are now fellow warriors, and he can see the day when every visitor will just pick up a bike automatically.

There will be elections in the future when the provision of better bicycle lanes will be the true votecatching issues. Won't that really be a new dawn, says the glowing, and newly evangelistic Eric. And if you say he jest happened to try it out in magical weather at a time when so many people are in a high good humour anyway, it would look sour and ungenerous, so we all keep, saying Eric's absolutely right, that it's con your bike for all of us as soon as we can organise it.