En-ger-land

This is the view from the main window of the "No" Lobby, which is next to the Chamber in the House of Commons.

Now, whose office could that be, then?!

But at this rate, the flag won't be flying much longer. Come on England.

Sea Mills Am Dram in action!

Around two years ago now, I took part in a day of revamping Sea Mills Community Centre. We painted it and began to clear out the area behind the stage.

But it soon emerged that clearing out the place was far more than a day's task, so we were more than happy to abandon ourselves to simply painting.

But since then, wonders have taken place at Sea Mills. They now have their own Sea Mills Amateur Dramatics group ( SMAD) run by Nick White and Tosh ( Nick is just behind me, Tosh is in pink in the middle.) They are writing plays, putting on pantos, and have around 20 members.

And not only that, they have completely cleared and revamped the Hall. The stage is now usable, and ready for productions!

If you want to find out more about SMAD, get in touch with Tosh: getintouch_amdram@hotmail.com

C'mon England.

It's not often you can watch the World Cup, (responsibly) enjoy a pint of beer with your friends and watch a sunset at the same time. But at the Mouse's pub beer garden you can do just that.

This is the happy scene just before the USA equalised last night.
There are very many more people who can provide more informed commentary on the match than I can, so I won't even go there; but suffice to say, if you have to watch England do it yet again, the Mouse garden with its outside TV is a very nice place to do it.

One of the great things about the World Cup is that it provides such a boost for our nation's pubs. So I'll use this opportunity to remind you to go to www.backthepub.com to support the campaign to save our nation's pubs. The World Cup just wouldn't be the same without them!

Getting settled into parliament...

Hooray! I finally have an office! ... but no computer yet...

This is it. Apparently I'm very lucky to have a window. The view is of some wall, then some scaffolding, but if you lean out perilously far, you can just see Big Ben. That's a friend sitting there, to give you an idea of scale... and just look at that lovely carpet.

Along with all the new MPs, I've been eagerly awaiting the allocation of my office. Apparently it's a marathon task, allocating offices to MPs. Think about it: First it had to be agreed which party occupied which part of the building, then all sorts of hierarchies etc would have to have been agreed , determining who got which office - then now-ex-Ministers have to be coaxed out of their old offices into their new, possibly much smaller, office. No wonder it's taken a while...

Victory for Bristol North West!

There's a good reason why the last post on this blog is some time ago - the whirlwind of the General Election descended and blogging went out of the window.

BUT! It's back! And now I'm blogging as your MP. All the official stuff will be on my official website - www.charlotteleslie.com - which is still undergoing changes and upgrades, but this is just an informal look at what I'm doing.

At the moment, I still don't have an office in parliament, we are working on a constituency office, and there's still a lot of logistics to be put into place - but it is great to be able to fight for my home with the resources that Westminster can offer to get things done for our area.

Oh, and the picture, if you hadn't already guessed, is me with my very proud and long-suffering mum and dad, on the morning of the count. It was getting on for 28 hours without sleep, so for that, I think we're all doing ok!