Best laid plans  

This is a story about me away from my job as a Member of Parliament. Well, almost anyway. As you will see, an MP can be on duty at any time. My story begins last Christmas when my Westminster Secretary bought me and my wife Elaine a present of two tickets for a performance of Carmen at the Royal Albert Hall.  Neither of us has ever been to the Royal Albert Hall and we have never before seen an opera, so we were thrilled. And although we haven’t been to an opera before, we both like Bizet’s music for Carmen and we have it on a CD at home. We fixed a date of Friday 27 February to see Carmen and we decided to make a weekend of our being in London, which is an extremely rare treat for us. But then I received an invitation to the home-coming parade in Stafford town centre of the 22 Signals Regiment after their tour of duty in Afghanistan. The date was Saturday 28 February. There...