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It’s all Mandarin to me

By Leslie Clark
November 12th, 2011 at 6:48 am | 5 Comments | Posted in Comedy

Ever wonder what goes on inside the mind of Julius Nicolson types? Well thanks to a FOI release of the weekly blog of top civil servant Permanent Secretary Sir Peter Housden, all is revealed! 

Originally for the consumption of Scotland’s civil servants via their intranet site, Sir Peter updated his colleagues on matters ranging from traditional mandarin activities to his tedious middle class existence outside of office hours.

They read very much like a 21st Century version of Grossman’s Diary of a Nobody.

You can view the released files in full here* but below includes a selection of his finest musings:

A baking hot weekend in London, hiding indoors for the most part. But we did venture out to the opera – this time to see a superb production of Don Giovanni…They are given under a canopy in Holland Park, and this time at a critical point, a pigeon flew in to join the proceedings and looked around rather disdainfully for a while before finding the way out. Perhaps she prefers Beethoven.” (12/07/2010)

I spent quite a bit of time this weekend with office papers… But I did get some time to have a mooch up and down George Street and get into Harvey Nicks, ostensibly in search of a raincoat. I came home with a jumper and a shirt, but that’s shopping isn’t it?” (06/09/2010)

“…in best Bridget Jones fashion, I can report Walks to Work (4), Pars at Duddingston (7,) Lost Balls (1), Swims (1), Car Wash (1) and Tyres Inflated (4). They needed it.” (31/01/2011)

And finally, in the interests of greater flexibility on the golf course, I plan on Monday night to make my second visit to a yoga class. And if that doesn’t work, I shall try Pilates. Desperate? Yes, I suppose so.” (15/08/2011)

As an interesting aside, Sir Peter currently earns approximately £180,000 p/a…

(*Caution: contains excruciatingly awful material)

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