Age: 0 years, 0 months, 0 days.
Appearance: Premature.
This is something to do with that big building full of bores, isn't it? What, Buckingham Palace?
No, the one you see on TV. The one with leather benches and lots of men in suits. Men who look like they've got pencils up their bott-. Parliament! It's called parliament! Yes, this does have something to do with those big rooms full of bores. MPs come back to the Commons today, after just 40 days away.
"Just" 40 days? That's almost as long as teachers get, and MPs don't have to check their seats for drawing pins. The summer recess used to be even longer, but David Cameron said three months was "absurd". This is only the third time the Commons has sat in September in living memory. The House of Lords is shut for another month.
Still . . . 40 days! A recess is not the same as a holiday. MPs spend most of it dealing with constituents' problems.
Who told you that? An MP, of course.
Let's pretend we believe that. Have the poor overworked dears been offered counselling? The new regime's not quite as exhausting as it sounds. There's another recess in 10 days, when they all go off for the party conferences.
When they all head to the seaside for some rumpy-pumpy with starry-eyed activists? That's a disgraceful slur. Only the Lib Dems will be anywhere near a beach. They're off to Liverpool, while Labour are going to Manchester and the Tories will be in Birmingham. They'll all be back in London a mere 25 days later.
It's like a . . . Treadmill? A modern form of slavery?
No, the phrase I was fumbling for was non-stop vacation. It makes you wonder how they remember their way back to Westminster. Or, indeed, if it would matter if they didn't.
Do say: "It's not how long you work, but how smart you work."
Don't say: "So, foreign secretary, get up to anything exciting since we last saw you?"
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