Ellee Seymour

I was deeply engrossed listening to Austin Mitchell tell me how the whips were hot on his tail if they felt he was being indiscreet on his blog when my phone rang. I thought I had switched it off beforehand, and immediately did so, without giving it a second thought.

I checked it when seated on the train home and picked up a voicemail from my son David telling me he was  having to go home from school because he had had a bad bang on his head while playing football, having crashed head-on with another player, that he was feeling sick and the school felt he should be checked over by the hospital.

There was lots of whispering in the background: “Tell her not to worry, that you are ok,” he was being prompted to say.

If only I could close my eyes and find myself by his side, I wished. Fortunately, granddad was on hand to take him for a check-up at a local minor injuries unit for concussion. I collected David with an advice sheet of important head injury symptoms to watch out for - no bright lights or loud noises, no TV, just quiet rest. 

This kind of accident had also happened to my younger son James, again while playing football. He felt sick and sleepy the next day, but I just thought he was under the weather, unaware he had banged his head the night before. However, when later that evening he wanted to fall asleep on the grass on a beautiful summer’s evening while watching David play cricket, alarm bells began to ring and I took him straight to hospital where he was given a scan and stayed in overnight for observation. Fortunately, he was fine.

David doesn’t seem too bad, he wants to watch Holly Oaks and also fancies a steak. I’m just going to check that he isn’t listening to his iPod.

Who was the first MP to write a blog? And which party has the most parliamentary bloggers, can you guess the ratio? These are some of the recent findings from my research project into MPs who write a blog.

I will tell you the answer when I return from London at the end of the day. I have interviews lined up with Ross Ferguson, Director of the Hansard Society’s eDemocracy programme, Labour MP Austin Mitchell and Tory MP James Duddridge for my assignment.

Austin describes Gordon Brown’s premiership brilliantly on his blog as “Cromwell takes over from CharlesI”, hinting at the austere times ahead.  Austin is another Labour blogging gem. I always thought Tom Watson wrote the definitive Labour parliamentary blog, but I’m not so sure now.

But where, or where, is Labour’s answer to Tory MP Nadine Dorries, whose blog is fresh and humorous, warm and witty? It is pure Nadine and unmissable. If you don’t believe me, you can catch up with her latest exploits and discover what happened when she took to the wheel of a tractor  in Covent Garden - and how she upstaged the Cheeky Girls!

Bernard Cook is the first mature adult I have highlighted in my posts about missing people. The link was sent to me by the charity missing people, Bernard’s family are desperate for news of him.

He disappeared in November 2005 aged 54 after going to work at the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company in Seaforth, Merseyside. He is a well known and much respected figure on Merseyside It is a baffling case.

Bernard’s picture was added on lorries across the country and his story written about in The Times. It describes how he just drove away from the office and disappeared. He had been married 29 years and was devoted to his two children, Claire, 22, and Andrew, 20.

His wife Bernadette wonders whether he felt pressured about work, it had become increasingly stressful. He took no money or clothing with him when he vanished and his wife told the paper:

“We are a family who eat together; we walk together. We are not a TV-dinner family. Even if he came in late I would sit with him. He’s a proper family man and so this is all just unreal. It’s surreal.

“Please just come home, Bernie. Don’t worry about anything else, we just so desperately want you home. Nothing else matters. I don’t want him to feel embarrassed or guilty or think, ‘Oh God what have I put them through?’ because it doesn’t matter. What people think is of no significance to me.”

In memory of those who are still missing.