Our moment is months, weeks and - if you can be bothered to calculate it - days away, and Dave is ticking them down like a distressed schoolboy awaiting the end of an arduous Michaelmas term. We need calm heads and sane minds, and DC, to escape the frenzy of those avid for power, has been spending less time with his shadow cabinet and more with old and trusted friends. As he said to me only yesterday, it reminds him of our summers on Mesopotamia (for those who were not educated at Eton, this is a reference not to holidays in the cradle of civilisation, but afternoons spent playing house cricket at school). Golden times. I fondly recall, even though only a month older, being mentor to Dave's protégé and, in the manner of Socrates and Plato, schooling his untutored, yet pliable, brain. He proved to be what dear old Vernon Bogdanor, "Boggers", would later term "a quick read".

Nearly 30 years on, Dave and I are still grappling with ethical issues. (There is perhaps an interesting distinction here between Hague wrestling with little Seb Coe and Cameron wrestling with arguably weightier matters.) None has exercised us more, recently, than BNP on QT - an issue that we resolved with as fine a piece of fence-sitting as you could wish to see. The whole thing was a minefield and Dave, adopting best policy for such a parlous situation, said and did nothing. In politics, if not in life, you can wait for the minefield to go away.

Back in what is laughably called the real world, might I take the chance to rebut claims that it was me who sent Boris Johnson a text message saying: "La vendetta è un piatto che va mangiato freddo." First, I do not have a mobile phone. Second, I have never found it necessary to learn Italian - Latin, of course. Third, I enjoy very cordial relations with Boris. Some may see him as a buffoon, but it strikes me that if the recession gets grimmer, the country might need a comedian in charge. And, so fast does politics move, already my preceding paragraph is dated.

I report a snippet of the just-ended telephone conversation. Coulson: OK, Donald, all Tories working in the media must henceforth text, twitter and social network.Me: But I only write for the Staggers! And, for reasons not properly explained, only fortnightly at that. One didn't, frankly, become involved in politics to see one's name in something apparently called Book of Face.

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