A General Election.

Last Saturday I voted in a general election, about the fifteenth time I have voted since twenty-one: I forget which candidates I voted for, past and recent, but I remember the electorates clearly enough. Last Saturday I went out with a vague hope that democracy still mattered in a conformist monolithic society. I had not seen much of the campaign on television, but I knew enough to tick the right boxes without hesitation. I used to drive to meetings in city halls where the candidates had to cope with hecklers and interjections, like stand-up comics. Those speeches, with interjections and humour, were different from today's leaders' debates, in front of a small audience cherry-picked for television, though T.V. still demands an actor's skills. One memorable Friday night I went to a Labour campaign get-together and there, not mixing it with many other Party members, Italked at some length to the silver-toned suntanned speaker Big Norm on his way to the top. - 26,27 September,2017.