So many of the Dutch speak such near-perfect English that the tiny mistakes they do make can jar scarily — like when a Vulcan posing as a human gives the game away by a small but key failure to emote. Battling through the endless security checks, concrete barriers and razor-wire fences that must be negotiated before one gains access to any secure compound in Afghanistan, I was encouraged to see a spectacularly good-looking young Dutch soldier walking towards me with a most engaging smile. “I do apologise, but this is Afghanistan,” he said. He came closer. “We have to take unusual measurements.”

Dream team

On my last night in the military camp in Oruzgan I sat upright in my bunk in the middle of a half-waking dream in which I was trying as Prime Minister to form a Cabinet. Before considering names it was necessary to decide how many government departments should be represented, and I was very clear that modern Cabinets have grown too large and that mine should have 11 members at most.

Fully awake now, I lay back and pondered. Could Health and Social Security be reunited? Defence? Yes, definitely — but why not put International Development (renamed Overseas Aid) back under the wing of the Foreign Office, and count towards its departmental budget the vast sums the military are now spending on what is essentially aid work? Obviously, the separate Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh Offices would have be to merged into a single Department for the Nations — or somesuch (I was wide awake now and getting quite agitated); and . . .

Then, in the pitch dark and dead of night in a Dutch military camp in the Afghan desert, a still, small voice within me, in tones of the gentlest, most affectionate reproof, said: “Matthew, you aren’t Prime Minister. You won’t be. You’re 59. Nobody’s asking you to form a Cabinet. Nobody ever will.” And, vastly relieved, and only a little bit disappointed, I drifted back to sleep.

He who waits

The next morning we put on our helmets and flak jackets and were driven out to the end of the big dirt airstrip to where an Antonov plane would fly in over the mountains from Kabul to take us back. We were early and the plane was late, and at about eight, before the sun was high, I stood, with my belongings in a heap, under a mighty, cloudless sky to wait.

There was nothing I should do, or could, but wait and watch helicopters landing, and a cargo plane come lumbering in from the heavens to be unloaded.

And I was so happy. Almost deliriously. Looking back towards boyhood, I realised that trudging down a long road to nowhere, or — beside a tarmac-strip road in the baking Lowveld in the middle of African emptiness — waiting to hitch a lift from a car or truck that might pass in an hour or so, and with a thousand miles still to go to my boarding school in Swaziland . . . these were among the happiest times of my life: waiting, with nothing to do, absorbed by the Bush around me, filled with peace.

Verse and worse

Back to Britain in time to make a Great Lives programme for BBC radio with the former Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, about his admired predecessor, Tennyson. I told Motion — and meant it — that I thought certain lines from his Elegy on the Death of HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (lines like: “And we, who estimate our loss/ In ways particular to us . . .”) more than the equal in their tenderness and delicacy, of Tennyson’s sometimes- ceremonious verse. I loved Motion’s poem the moment I heard it, and could not understand why people were sniffy. Look at it again.

And then to the House of Commons, to give evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee’s Inquiry on Official Language. As we witnesses delivered to the committee our weighty opinions on ghastly jargon, I could see from the corner of my eye sketchwriters smirking from where I used to smirk: trying to think of something amusingly horrid to say.

Later a friend e-mails to tell me my strictures have failed to sink home. This yesterday, from Lord Drayson, the Minister for Space: “The Innovation Growth Team for Space will create a 20-year strategy for British leadership in space. It will set out the challenges and opportunities that govern future value creation, competitiveness and growth in the space sector.” Weep Tennyson. Weep Motion. Weep, ye aliens.

Times Recommends

• Fragility always gets my sympathy vote
• Double it and you get the real jobless total
• Has al-Megrahi paid his council tax?