LUNCH last Friday was in my Blackburn office with six students, who at different times had done "work experience" there.

This was a thank you to them, since they had worked really hard, for nothing except incidental expenses, the pleasure of the company of my staff in the office (which is good), the experience, and I suppose, a line on their CV.

We had a lively discussion over lunch about what careers they wanted to follow, and about politics. After all, they could not have had the experience of working in my office as Blackburn's MP, if in turn the democratic political process had not resulted in my election.

Yet again, I was struck by the contrast between what we are all told is a decline in people's interest in politics -- and the fact that an awful lot of people seem very interested. Here were six young people, bright and normal -- the Pride of North East Lancashire, to use a phrase.

None of them were "anoraks". Each had real insights into contemporary politics, and most were likely to take a job either in politics or be involved in it. Of course, they were a self-selected group. But I had drawn similar conclusions from the very good attendances I've had this year at three separate neighbourhood meetings I've called. I cannot help feeling that many people feel alienated from what they may see as some of the phoney aspects of politics as portrayed on TV or in the national newspapers.

Last Saturday was to have been a normal constituency day -- surgeries, an open air meeting in the town centre -- plus my first attendance at Ewood Park this season. Instead, I had to go off to Geneva for a meeting of the P5 Foreign Ministers (the five permanent UN Security Council members -- China, Russia, France, US and UK) called by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General to discuss the situation in Iraq, and the terrible repercussions for the United Nations itself of the terrorist bombing of their Baghdad Headquarters on August 19.

The meeting itself was sombre; and, as I said afterwards, constructive if inconclusive. But I thought that I might miss the meeting altogether, because of mishaps on the way.

I left my Blackburn home early (very) on the Saturday to pick up a plane at Blackpool airport. In turn this would fly to Northolt, the RAF airfield in West London to collect my staff; and then on to Geneva.

So we got to Blackpool in good time. But no plane. No, we were told emphatically, the only plane coming in was a Ryanair one from somewhere. It was definite: no plane had come in to pick me up. Maybe it had landed at BAE's Warton airfield by mistake, we surmised, as the police with us put in further calls.

More time goes by; and with it my resentment at having to get up early not to catch a plane, but to find one. Then, suddenly, someone else said, well may be a plane had landed earlier that morning, but they thought it might be parked right on the other side of the airfield.

So we hared out of the gates round the airfield, and as we went through another entrance and what looked like my plane hove into view, there was an almighty crunch from the front of the vehicle I was in; a loud grinding. The gearbox had wrecked itself. And it was only 7.50am.

Fortunately, the rest of the day -- though very serious -- was rather more straightforward.