Seriously Nostalgic For April, 2008.


Oh God it’s just awful (even more awful that is) living in this country, what with weird Tories, crowing happily and grinning all over the place ( Why do they look so weird when they smile?) Councils taken across the UK of course, and the big fat boo hoo shame for me this past week has been coming to terms with the fact that the upper class twit of the year is now the mayor of me. I was no fan of Ken Livingstone but a part of me is sorry for him. I kind of miss him already. I'm tempted to write him a letter telling him where he went wrong. Last Saturday morning I burst into hysterical laughter reading about the results in The Times but only because if I hadn’t done so this volcano of disappointment and rage might well have expressed itself as tears. I am pretty much always on the verge.

Ugh they’re back, aren’t they? Tories. The Tories Are Back. It’s still sort of sinking in. I appreciate that technically they’re not in real power yet but why do I feel like it’s the ‘80s all over again? It could be the nasty newspapers having their field day, or a new generation of Sloane Rangers braying their heads off everywhere I go, or Ian Hislop looking happy (see-it’s most sinister when they smile) or the general triumphing of a great section of the population that I just can’t abide. Oh I do know some Tories, a couple of the old school Thatcher-y ones but many more of the new (neo?) kind, and they’re nice people and all that. I believe their views are sincerely held but also that they’re deluded, have short memories and are perhaps a little ungrateful for freedoms and rights they enjoy that a Tory government would never ever have passed as statutes. But there you go - I imagine they think similar things about me, too.

I think on and I worry about the clock going backwards. If this is the new 1980s does it mean I’ll have to start working at WH Smith on a Saturday again? And drinking barley wine and lime? Shit. And eek! How many Royal Weddings must we suffer? Will The Housemartins reform? That would be too much to bear, wouldn't it? Ohmygod ohmygod ohmyGOD it has just dawned - will Spitting Image come back and throw unfunny rubber satire at me on Sundays nights? Worst. Decade. Ever.

As for Johnson and Cameron etc., –I have processed all the “blah blah they’re all the same anyway” but… they’re not really, are they? (Section 28?). While I could list 1,000 or more things wrong with this incarnation of Labour and with Gordon Brown (whom Fints inexplicably to me actually despises) my bottom line, my un-crossable electric fence of belief is… I just don’t want to be governed by upper-class people who went to Eton and feel they have a right to rule. The old boys had their turn at running things, and I really hoped we’d moved on and that someone else could have a go for a couple of centuries. Really, I don’t even think there should be public schools - I know, I know Len Spart or Ken Spart or whatever his name was. Call it class envy or even class hatred (call it what you bloody well like, I don’t care) but at soon as I hear a certain type of accent I just shut down, stop listening and stop cooperating. I don’t know where I get it from - mum and dad are certainly nothing like that. It's entirely possible I listened to The Eton Rifles too much at school. But that really would my personal politics in a nutjob and I'm hard-wired this way, like a robot beep beep. So endov - don't write in!

Hey I’m, like, making myself totally late for a disco date here. Meant to be in hair and make-up in, like, no minutes. But I’ve reached a sort of watershed with The Project which means more journal time again and I can muck about a bit tomorrow so I’ll come back then and do the nice, un-ranty stuff.