Someone left the cake out in the rain…

We’re sitting late tonight, by which I mean even later than usual. Business will run till 11pm, and then there could be a few votes. And tomorrow, instead of voting at 7pm as is usual on a Wednesday we could in theory run till past 10pm, depending on whether all the items on the agenda take up all their allocated time slots.

There’s a bit of a siege mentality on nights like this. I’ve just been on a trawl of the tearoom trying to find something to eat.  Spoilt for choice – cucumber, tomatoes, grated carrot, and fennel, celery and soya bean salad. (Hate fennel, hate celery – yes, I know, I have no right to be so fussy).  There’s carrot and coriander soup, which would normally be marked vegan but tonight is just marked V for veggie, so I ask, to be on the safe side….  And I discover that the meat/ fish soups are made in the House of Commons kitchens, but the veggie ones are from the Covent Garden soup range. Which means basically they’ve been getting it wrong in labelling them vegan for rather a long time. They’re not. I’m a bit cross about this.

Anyway, while on a food theme, here’s a quick plug for Greenpeace’s autumn campaign, Flour Power, urging people to ‘bake cakes, not the planet’.  And as a result of my quest for a cake-related song title, I’ve now got MacArthur’s Park in my head. Totally bonkers, but absolute genius. Can’t find a decent youtube clip though, so you’re spared…

PS I am currently in my office working on a speech for the EU draft budget debate tomorrow, and watching goings on in the Chamber on telly. A shoddy little Bill, Chris Bryant MP has just called it. Just in case you thought I was slacking.