Finding it hard to focus. Election day today, having such high hopes and no hopes all at the same time. I may be a dual citizen but never feel I will be particularly effective here canvassing or phone banking with this accent, but I give talks you know, play the ghost of Britain’s future, write impassioned things like
Vote today! Vote for the party that will transform Britain. I am interviewing people starving themselves for days, freezing because they cannot afford heat, abandoning all social contact because they can’t afford bus fare or the cost of a coffee, facing and fearing and enduring homelessness, worrying about the suicides of people they work with or people they love, looking forward to a bleak precarious future without an end to it and contemplating suicide themselves…This is Tory Britain. We can do better.
I have never had to wait in line to vote at my current polling station here in Longsight, but today they’d moved everything to the big hall and there I was with around 30 of the most diverse group of people I have shared a space with in some time (unless it was the 192 bus), and a number of kids getting to post the votes for their parents into the box…it was pretty beautiful. I listened to those conversations around me, that was one hall full of labour voters. I know we’re a safe seat but still. It’s the community side of it that always gets me, though the bread and roses is pretty good too. 🌹🌹🌹
The other side? I was looking at my hundred blogs unposted in a flighty fretful unable-to-settle mood and found this from Nicholas Nickleby. It sums up Johnson perfectly in our worst of times, Dickensian times:
‘There’s something in his appearance quite—dear, dear, what’s that word again?’
‘What word?’ inquired Mr. Lillyvick.
‘Why—dear me, how stupid I am,’ replied Miss Petowker, hesitating. ‘What do you call it, when Lords break off door-knockers and beat policemen, and play at coaches with other people’s money, and all that sort of thing?’
‘Aristocratic?’ suggested the collector.
‘Ah! aristocratic,’ replied Miss Petowker; ‘something very aristocratic about him, isn’t there?’
