“WHAT is MP Mark Oaten trying to tell The Chronic?” demands Cressroads’ Mr Luv-a-Duck. “Given he has the pair of us most to thank for his two-seat majority to represent Winchester’s Watercress Capital of the World, until he finds our city ‘less at ease with itself’ than when he was first elected to Westminster thirteen years ago. And isn’t that rich!”

“Meaning?” asks Blogsbody.

“That, in company with so many other troubled cities for constituencies, it is far more a case of voters becoming less and less at ease with their parliamentary representative hitting the headlines for all of the wrong reasons; and, old boy, good reason for the two of us to remember how mistaken we were to talk ourselves into voting just that once during our combined total of 88 eligible years.”

“Or put another way, Frenchie, it’s 57-years-apiece since we were each given the vote and conscripted for National Service at one and the same time as Ma’am was crowned Queen Bess-the-Second at Westminster Abbey ... “

“ ... and Hillary and Tenzing went on to conquer Mount Everest,” adds the never to be outdone alternative septuagenarian, before he goes on to warn how Oaten predicts: ‘In the race to succeed me, there is everything to play for and it could be down to two votes for a second time’.”

“Perhaps less so,” ponders the town hack, “if Oaten had long since vacated his seat in the certain knowledge his extra-parliamentary behaviour was at unacceptable odds with a significant number of his supporters as well as the Greater Cressroads electorate?”

Before they each pause to whet their silver whiskers by dribbling seemingly all but indelible red wine, and Alresford’s Blogsbody re-opens his copy of Friday’s Chronic to display four talkative shots of Oaten sporting his ginger stubble and waving his hands in further explanation of reporter Warwick Payne’s half-page article headlining the former public relations man’s regret: ‘I wasn’t cut out to be our party leader.’

“No s**t, Sherlock!” chorus the septuagenarian pair.

An article accounting for all of the top-half of a broadsheet, while the county weekly’s free-to-join Two’s Company dating hotspot of Women’s Ads, Men’s Ads and Men-Seeking-Men; totalling 130 classifieds coloured black and pink-on-white; fully occupies all of the column inches of the bottom half of the same page-eight.

“ ... ah yes, Frenchie, first met the PR-man for our newly elected MP attending a cocktail bash to welcome a pair of all but Chelsea out-of-towners set to challenge Alresford’s floral Paul to his second commercial War of the Roses in Cressroads with their Rampant Stamen,” explains the town hack.

“And, if I may stop you there,” insists Frenchie, “when, these dozen or so years later we come to share the triple concern that, just as Oaten’s everyday skills are rooted in public relations, before as well as after publicising his way to Westminster, as many as three of the four candidates for his Winchester seat changed this time around the hustings to include part of Oaten’s old constituency in a new Meon Valley seat are fought over by more PR-executives blowing their own trumpets.”

“But, Frenchie, if we do decide to vote for a second time in our combined but chequered century-and-a-half on Mother Earth, we are left with the choice of successful entrepreneurial businessman George Hollingbery for us to want to send to Westminster?” Blogsbody mulls aloud.