Jackie

Dear Diary,

In my youth, despite Mama’s protests I took that wonderful magazine Jackie. I was particularly fascinated by Cathy and Claire, even though I had to tell Mama that I had not the faintest idea what they were talking about.

The magazine is supposed to have been named after Jacqueline Wilson, but this is obviously an error. In a jounalistic scoop I can reveal that it was named after our esteemed Home Secretary, Jackie Smith. This must be so, because Jackie’s behaviour and attitude is still redolent of the days of her youth, as is clear from the following letter (written pseduonymously to Cosmo, but plainly bearing the marks of its author). How the letter found its way to me is very much to be kept on the down-low (as QV is spelt nowadays): suffice it to say that Tucker’s little tool came in very handy.

Dear Ed,

Gosh but I’m not sure what to do. Hope you can help! I’ve got quite an exciting job really and I’ve absolutely smashed the glass ceiling. Mummsy is so proud!

The trouble is that people are saying that my boss and I are out of touch. It’s all codswallop really but people believe it which is just such a pain! Then they say nasty, horrible, mean things about me which is just so unfair, because I only do what my boss and the people who work for me tell me to do! It’s not as if these things are my ideas after all.

Just as an example I’ve got a problem at the moment about making sure that the people I have to look after are safe. Obviously, I can’t tell you the true situation or you’d be able to say who I was, and that would never do! So let’s just say that I have to look after some sheep. And some nasty sheep are coming to get the sheep I am looking after. And the nasty sheep look the same as my nice sheep, so it’s a bit difficult to know who is nice and who is nasty! So what I thought - and my boss and the people who work for me - is that is we thought someone was a nasty sheep we should just lock them up and check it out! Simple and brilliant don’t you think? That way, the police sheep would be able to investigate the locked up sheep to see if they were nasty sheep.

My old boss wanted to lock up the nasty sheep for 56 days but I thought that was jolly mean! So I said 42 days because they should get time off for good baaah-haviour (gosh - isn’t that funny! My sister practically wet herself when I told her that). But now, everyone is saying that it’s really unfair on the sheep we think are nasty but turn out to be nice and they’re being really mean to me. I keep trying to tell them that we’ll all end up in the cottage-pie (sorry! Just can’t stop my GSOH from coming out, even in difficult times - that’s just how I am!) but they don’t listen to me!

And, to make it worse, this really horrid group of people are saying they’re going to Court to stop me locking up the shep who may be nasty. And I keep trying to tell them that the most important thing of all is not to be made into lamb casserole (sorry!) by the sheep who might be nasty so it’s important to be able to lock up any sheep that might be nasty in case they turn out to be nasty which will save lots of nice sheep from being hot-pot (sorry!) and that even though the people who work for me might not know exactly who the nasty sheep are they are being very careful when they choose the sheep who might be nasty and are making sure that they only chose the ones who have nasty books or pamphlets or friends or family or who once wrote a letter to someone whose uncle definitely was a nasty sheep or who are absolutely the last person at the end of the ipp-dip-doo and they just won’t listen!

Please help me, ‘cos I don’t know what to do and it’s making me sad. I’m sure you’re all nice sheep and I love the Mag!

J