AFTER standing toe-to-toe with the biggest political heavyweights in the House of Commons, there is surely little that can intimidate Sandra Gidley.

But two days after losing her Romsey and Southampton North seat last month, the 53-year-old couldn’t even face a trip to her local Waitrose store.

Uncertain of the response she’d receive from her former constituents, she had to be coaxed out of her home by 28-year-old daughter Gemma.

Would they be glad to be rid of her? Or would she well up with tears if they took pity? Putting on a brave face, the flamehaired ex-MP was relieved to find the fears were only in her head.

“I was dreading it, but people were very nice and I realised it wasn’t too bad. Once I’d done that and got out there, it was ok,”

she said.

But when the mother and daughter returned to their cul-de-sac, they were shocked to spot a neighbour erecting a huge banner of Caroline Nokes, the Tory rival who had beaten her by 4,156 votes just 48 hours earlier.

“I just thought, why be so nasty and try to upset someone?”

Thankfully it was an isolated incident, but remains one of the low points in the month since her election loss.

Speaking in her half-empty town centre office, and surrounded by shredded confidential documents, the former pharmacist gave the Daily Echo an intriguing insight into the harsh reality of adjusting to life after parliament, and admitted she still has little idea about what the future holds.

Having won a shock by-election in 2000 and then re-elected in 2001, and again in 2005, those early hours on Friday, May 7, was the first time she had tasted defeat in her career. Under the glare of the media spotlight and with opponents celebrating her demise, she tried to keep emotions under control.

“I didn’t feel on the night as if I was bottling [my emotions] up, but my daughter was quite worried about me. I went home and depressed myself by watching the election results come in; it wasn’t a good night for the Lib-Dems.

I’d also made the mistake of agreeing to do Radio Solent in the morning,” she said.

“Going into a studio the night after I’d lost, when I hadn’t had any sleep for about 30 hours, is probably the daftest thing I have ever done in my life. I had to tell people not to be nice to me because that was what upset me, I did get a bit choked up.”

Once the telephone calls from journalists had died away and with her diary empty for the first time in a decade, she’s had to come to grips with the real world. From being in the thick of the action, she could only watch on from the outside as the Tory/Lib- Dem pact was struck.

Depressingly, one of her first tasks as a former MP was to make her team of three fulltime staff and several more part-timers, some of whom she’d worked with for nine years, redundant.

“Your parliamentary email stops working after a week, which is a nightmare – and it’s actually quite brutal. The other thing you have to do is go and clear your Westminster office and they only gave you until the Tuesday after the election. The last thing you want to do is go back to parliament, which is full of new MPs strutting their stuff. It was odd.”

Asked what it has been like to have so much time on her hands over the past few weeks, she replied: “It’s horrible. I will have to give myself a strict timetable and make myself do things. They’ll give me a focus through the day.

“It’s horrible because I don’t know how long it’s going to go on for. If I knew that in two months’ time I’d have a job then I’d really enjoy it and use the time to do things I haven’t had a chance to do over the past ten years. But because it’s potentially stretching off into infinity, which it won’t because there are things coming up, it is quite daunting.”

Like all outgoing MPs, the mum-of-two received a tax-free, one-off payment of six months’ salary of about £30,000. She conceded that some may consider it too generous, but dispelled the myth that MPs could simply walk into a new job.

“You just can’t go out and get a job the next day. You are knackered after the election and you’ve still got constituents writing to you and casework to type up.

“Contrary to popular opinion, I think the longer you are an MP I suspect the more unemployable you are in lots of ways. You are used to doing what you want when you want and people deal with you in a different way when you are an MP.

“After the last election, nearly half the MPs were unemployed a year later. It may be that they had unrealistic expectations about what they should be offered. The truth is you don’t suddenly have loads of companies beating a path to your door inviting you to be a director.”

Asked what she will do next, Sandra honestly replies with a half smile: “I haven’t got a clue.”

Having always been promoted or headhunted in her previous career, she has never had a need for a written CV.

Even while in Westminster, she continued her professional development as a registered pharmacist. While she’s not sure about managing a pharmacy full-time again, as she did at Tesco’s Bursledon before being elected, she is considering locum work.

“The brilliant thing about being an MP is that you get such a lot of variety in your job and I’ve been struggling to think of anything that would give me that type of variety.

So the conclusion I’ve come to is that it might have to be two or three things, I really don’t know.

“I’ve been approached by a national charity to be a trustee – it doesn’t pay much but it’s interesting. I’ve reached a stage in my life where I’m not motivated by money. It’s not a case of finding something that will impress other people, but finding something I will find interesting and satisfying.”

While she’s not making any long-term decisions at the moment, she’s trying to make the most of her unplanned break by jetting off to America to indulge in her hobby of jewellery making – and in particular the art of seed beading.

For ten days she intends to forget about politics – and being an ex-MP – at the Bead and Button Show in Milwaukee.

“It’ll be fantastic because nobody will know me. I’ll just be ‘Sandra from England’.

It’s my one-off treat to myself, the opportunity will probably never come up again.”

When she returns, she’s looking forward to embarking on the next chapter of her life, which, as much as she misses it, is unlikely to involve full-time politics.

“When you are a pharmacist everyone loves you, it tops the list of most trusted professions, but when you are an MP you suddenly become a public hate figure and an easy target. It’s quite nice not to have to put up with that rubbish.

“As much as I loved being an MP, it’s not the only game in town. It’s not always politicians who make things happen and, with the experience I have got over the past ten years, maybe I can make things happen, too.”