Forgive us. But the conversation on Cressroads’ wrong side of the Watercress Line hit a steamy note for a Sunday afternoon, after the lone figure of Winchester’s parliamentary Libdem candidate Martin Tod walked into a one-to-one with the town hack.

Coming in the opposite direction, Blogsbody was headed home from Alresford’s Doom & Gloom clutching a Pesky Tesky bag with a packet of onion and sage stuffing as well as two cans of naturally sweet sweetcorn to supplement a later than planned roast chicken dinner.

In his sights, Candidate Martin!

Waving his ‘vote-for-me’ goodbyes to the immigrant staff of Mitford Road’s newly-opened Sunstar Store – 1.5 miles from the heart of town and affording the city-built estate a store to call its own again – in the wake of two previous attempts to re-open had each failed and resulted in closure for as long as the past 18 months.

But now for the convenience outlet to look to number as another of lessee Sri Arthanari’s potentially successful retailing ventures, after he qualified for a rural development grant of £17,000 to gut and develop the operation to twice its previous size as well as to introduce alcohol to a mix of groceries, newspapers, flowers and such services as dry-cleaning as well as ironing.

“A grant, eh! That I didn’t know,” mused Martin. “And, you know, I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

Blogsbody wasn’t asking. But he did go on to query the candidate’s knowledge of a Cressroads’ dogging hotspot, visible when approaching Alresford from Winchester on the north-bound carriageway of the A31.

A severe blight on its rural landscape that has troubled the town council into requesting police make a presence known. And they have. Officers in their cruisers were despatched to the forested lay-by to knock on windows and distribute National Health Service ‘safe sex’ literature to cars, their drivers and back-seat passengers.

“It came as quite a shock for them and me after-dark one evening,” begins Martin.

“Travelling in a police car when, or so it seemed, taking no more than a press of a single button our uniformed driver illuminated so-called ‘Dogging Alley’ with his battery of lights.”

Not for reasons of the police looking to distribute more NHS material, but rather more their past preventative effort is one that Martin wholeheartedly endorses.

Then for him to bid farewell and look to return to task pursuing his Sunday afternoon’s team of canvassers.

Their paving Martin’s campaigning way through mailboxes of the city-built estate with more in his series of letters and leaflets aimed at hitting Cressroads’ homes with a candidate’s promise to ‘deliver real change, and put local people first.’