There were pictures the other day of Sarah Brown, Naomi Campbell and Paris Hilton, all hanging out together at the African women's summit in Los Angeles.

“Oh dear,” I thought to myself. “I wonder who is looking after Gordon?” And blow me down, but only a day later there he was up on a podium, saying that police should be on hand, to walk people “the last mile” home from cashpoints.

I could imagine Sarah frowning and watching it on BBC News, perhaps on one of those screens on the Heathrow Express. “Darling?” she had probably forgotten to say, as she had lugged her suitcase out through the hall. “You will remember not to make any ravingly bonkers policy announcements while I'm away, won't you? Ones that you've plainly made up in the shower that very morning? Please?”

Such a rubbish idea. And yet, so low have our expectations become that it almost feels like bullying to make a fuss. Still, hey-ho, that's what I'm here for. So. For starters, you'd have to walk “the last mile” home from a cash machine only if you lived more than a mile from a cash machine. Yes? Gordon? Following? Only, if you do, you probably live in the countryside, which means that there's nobody around to mug you, and you won't be walking anywhere, anyway.

In the towns, meanwhile, you're going to be able to get a policeman to take you home only if you can find a policeman, and if there were policemen about, you wouldn't be getting mugged in the first place. If you can't find a policeman, you'll have to call one. Then you'll have to wait, with a bulging wallet, for an indeterminate amount of time, at night, while probably being elderly, next to a cash machine. Brilliant.

This only a few weeks after the “trade in your very old car and get a discount on a new car” stroke of genius. Lord Mandelson's initiative, true, but I'm convinced he mentioned it to the PM only to win some kind of prankish bet. It's a very Gordon initiative. If you have a ten-year-old car, you probably won't be that excited about getting a slightly cheaper brand new car. If you are excited by this sort of thing, you probably didn't keep your old car for ten years. One commentator likened it to the sort of idea that team Ignite might come up with on a particularly bad episode of The Apprentice.

What other gems do you reckon the PM has sloshing around in that big, Kong-ish head of his? Compulsory fruit? Pet jails? It's as though the rest of the Cabinet have all tiptoed away, leaving him free to just witter on about whatever takes his fancy. I keep thinking about that infamous smiling YouTube video. Staggering, now, to realise that this was his genuine, best attempt to see off the expenses tsunami. As if the Captain of the Titanic had tried to melt the iceberg with a hairdryer. Mostly, though, I just keep wondering whether there was anybody else in the room. I've a horrible feeling there wasn't. Just him, alone, balancing his camera on his ironing board, setting the timer and waiting, grin already fixed.

This was no place like home

I was in a village pub on Monday, nattering with a bunch of cheery old men. It's not so bad, this job, if you play it right. Must remember to claim for the nuts.

Actually, that's probably overselling it, a touch. I was in Blackburn, West Lothian, home of the Britain's Got Talent singing sensation Susan Boyle. It's not a dump, exactly, but it couldn't sue if you said that it was. It's just one of those small, slightly aimless townlets that you get in the more drab parts of Scotland, all grey and council-owned, and with no special reason for existing since they closed the mines. It's the sort of place I've always passed through, and looked from the window, and been glad I don't come from. Then I went to the pub.

OK, so it wasn't that great. But if there's a better place to spend your afternoons when you're old and wobbly than in a wee pub a short walk from home, full of people you've known all your life, I'd like to hear about it. They asked what it was like living in London, I said that I lived near the middle, but my nearest friend lived about a mile away. They thought I was mad. I'm not sure they were wrong. Sometimes, I think, it's possible to be nostalgic for something you've never had; for a way of life that you never even went near. That's what I had in Blackburn. The beer was pretty cheap, too.

No accounting for it

Look here, dodgy MPs. You're playing this all wrong. What you should do, if accused of chivvying, say, £41,709 out of your expenses, is turn out your pockets and say “I've got, um, £12.53”. Then you should go away, and come back with your sofa. Then your mattress. Then your kettle and your television and your plates and the rest of your second home, right down, if necessary, to the toothbrush. What you should not do is simply produce a cheque for that amount, seemingly with minimal effort, and say “fine, sorry, have it back, then”. Because that doesn't make you look any better. Don't you see?

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