I’m assuming that by the time this newsletter pops up wherever it normally pops up for you, the UK election will be over, and we’ll know who our government overlords are going to be for the next few years. But let’s be honest, anything could happen between the time of me writing this and you reading it, so I don’t want to risk saying too much in case I end up looking like a dumdum.
They say a week is a long time in politics, but even a night can go on for a while, especially if you’re messing around with the space-time continuum. It’s always entirely possible that things will go in a way you never expected. For example, a quantum glitch could mean the election count falls into a bizarre alternate dimension and we end up with an eccentric independent candidate from Surrey who stood for the sole reason of raising awareness about the potholes on his road, and has now been elected to every constituency in the United Kingdom. He has to sort out the entire country while his wife Gillian obsessively dusts the ornaments in Number 10 and tuts at him when he comes home late from PMQs. It was bad enough when it was just the golf, Bill, she’ll say. She told him that running for parliament was a silly idea, but he wouldn’t listen, would he, and now look what’s happened.
But anyway, whoever wins the election, it’s not my fault, because I didn’t vote for any of them.
Some people probably think it’s extremely irresponsible of me to not vote in the general election, what with the state of the world and all those women who threw themselves under horses for me and so on, but people who think that are missing two important pieces of information. Firstly, I am extremely irresponsible. And secondly, I actually have a long history of political activism that probably puts them to shame.
I was only eight or so when I first stepped into the world of politics with my band, Pounds & Pence. I was in the band with my brother, and he was older so he got to be Pounds. In hindsight I can see this ageism was probably the first institutional failure of the revolutionary apparatus, but at the time I was just pleased that I got to be Pence, because that seemed like a better name for a girl. Our first (and only) song was a searing protest against injustice. It was called We Want More Pocket Money, and the only part I can remember is the chorus, which was also, “We want more pocket money.” I vaguely recall that the tune was kind of punky, but given that my favourite record at the time was Xanadu by Olivia Newton John, I’m not going to insist on being right about that.
We performed this song at our parents as part of our wider campaign for pocket money reform. Our parents were unmoved by the heartfelt protest, likely because they were capitalist pigdogs who took pleasure in others’ suffering and even a measly penny chew was too much for those fascists to spare.
Later, at secondary school, I started an underground feminist book club. This consisted of instigating the passing around of an increasingly worn-out paperback copy of Shirley Conran’s Lace, a bonkbuster novel full of absolute filth. It begins when a young actress brings four estranged friends together in a ski chalet and demands to know, “Which one of you bitches is my mother?” This sends the friends (one of whom is called Pagan, just FYI - she’s the really slutty one) spinning backwards through time to tell the stories of their steamy romps with various heart throbs and their throbbing… hearts, etcetera.
Shirley Conran is also famous for having once said, “Life is too short to stuff a mushroom,” and it’s honestly hard to say which of these two contributions was the most powerfully influential in my life. I can definitely say I’ve never even attempted to stuff a mushroom. But then again, I’ve never put a baby up for adoption only to have her become a famous actress and return to my life 20 years later in order to force a sordid confession from me that I was once a terrible slut. So, swings and roundabouts, I guess. Or sluts and mushrooms. Whatever.
They put Lace on telly, too, as a miniseries, although I doubt very much I was allowed to watch it. Anyway, we only had one television, in the living room, and I don’t suppose that I would have wanted to watch any steamy romping while my parents were sitting on the sofa beside me, counting the extra ten pence pieces they’d saved by underpaying our pocket money all those years.
But my political activism didn’t end there. There was also the environmental work, which consisted of me making a leaflet about saving the planet, and copying it several hundred times in Prontaprint. And then there was the time when I stood quite near to a poll tax riot. There may even have been some spoken word poetry on the subject of war and how it’s not very nice. And that’s not even the half of it.
At some point it became clear to me that I didn’t actually know what the fuck I was talking about. Okay, yes, war is bad, not least because it inspires teenagers to write terrible poetry under the delusion that they’re the Wilfred Owens of the Falklands conflict. But where the fuck is Gilbraltar, anyway? No one ever interrupted any of my heart rending lyrical soliloquies to ask me to point it out on a map, which was lucky for me, because I’m pretty sure I would have had no choice but to burst into tears and storm off to my bedroom, complaining I was being oppressed by geography fascists and it wasn’t fair.
Nowadays, of course, even adults don’t feel the need to actually know any facts about a situation before expressing an opinion about it and cancelling anyone who disagrees. Their knowledge is stored in memes on the internet, which has the advantage of making them believe they have infinite information at their fingertips while at the same time having absolutely nothing but empty space in their heads.
I’m not claiming to be any better. The only stuff in my head is the lyrics of Taylor Swift songs, vague details from 1980s bonkbusters, speculation about the various relationships within Fleetwood Mac, and a lot of weird ideas that I got from obsessively reading Philip K Dick novels in my youth.
If Philip K Dick were writing this newsletter, he’d probably say there’s no point voting because we are living in a simulated reality and our governments are deeply corrupt cabals whose purpose is to keep us from discovering the truth that the world actually ended in 1945, but if we take this cool drug imported from an alien planet, the veils of illusion will fall and we will know ourselves for what we truly are (as long as there are no weird side effects to this alien drug, of course.)
Shirley Conran would not be writing this newsletter, because politicians are not sexy enough to write about. The idea of politicians getting frisky in a ski chalet is enough to make anyone wish the world had ended in 1945 and that they had never been born.
Whatever this next era of government brings, I can guarantee you it will not be bonkbusting steamy romps (and if it is, let’s hope we can all get our hands on some reality-altering alien narcotics.) However, the future will almost certainly involve potholes, so I’m voting for Bill.
Life is not too short to fill a pothole, bitches.
*renews Ticketmaster page obsessively to get front row tickets for Pounds and Pence*
Strange. Currently streaming my way thru 'The Man in the High Castle' season 2. I do believe in synchronicity tho I hate Carl Jung. Based on the short story by PK Dick. A lot to make of a short story. Timely, as we've just lost our democracy, stateside. Watching on my phone because I lost all my furniture in my latest (forced) move. Now I finally understand why folks download things. Back on Instagram I got myself in an argument over Chinatown the film. Wrote something that seemed to shut it down without further response so I figure everyone was bored silly or maybe it was 'pretty good' as John Lennon might say. 'Somewhere, in an alternate universe, there's a better version of Chinatown, with a different director. Cheers and happy election!