Well folks, you have around 28 days to listen to me strut my stuff on BBC Essex. Click the link to Tony Fisher’s show on Friday 29 May. The show started at 2:00 pm; I’m on between about 3:15 and 3:30, so about one and a quarter hours into the programme. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02rn7jh#auto

The ISBN number is issued: 9780956287021, and has already been picked up by Amazon... I am currently negotiating copyright permission costs for the images I want to use in the book. Prices vary enormously but I have now fixed the ones I want to use.

So, the people have spoken; or rather 66% of the people have spoken. Nearly 16 million people were too lazy or indifferent to get off their backsides and register their opinion. That is a pity. When the Scots voted in the independence referendum, nearly 85% of those eligible did vote. Our Dave has got the people’s mandate, but he picked up less than a quarter of the eligible votes. Is that democracy? Well, as the well-known saying has it, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink even if you hold his head under it…

Some interesting features though; UKIP polled the third largest number of votes: more than 8%. The Scottish Nationalists, for all of their ‘Tsunami’ north of the border only picked up 34% of their electorate, and it is comforting to see that the British National Party polled less than half that of the Monster Raving Loonies.

Unusual too to see such carnage among the losers, with the opposition leaders of the parties who came 2nd, 3rd and 4th committing mass political Hara Kiri.  

I suppose we should be glad that one party has an overall majority, but it’s the same party who has committed itself to an in/out referendum on Europe. The Europeans really must despair of us, and all the potential foreign investors, wanting to build factories in the Eurozone and fancying Great Britain, will now be on hold for the next two years, even if they decide to hold us open as an option at all. Ah well, it’s Friday and the pub beckons; it’s also the day for the really difficult numerical puzzles in the Daily Telegraph (the only day I buy it) if I haven’t left it too late to buy one…  

The script has gone to be professionally laid out and I am now struggling with the illustrations. Perhaps the book will be released on to an unsuspecting public by July.