e Day

It’s election day! Thank Christ. The election has been described variously as ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for ugly people (which is odd, because I thought that’s what ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ was) or Eurovision for straight people. Whatever, it means that after tonight, there’s a chance that the media won’t be saturated with politicians and pundits the way a mattress at a crime scene is saturated with an undiscovered corpse.

So while schoolchildren roam the streets because some schools are closed to become polling stations, there is some excitement that it’s all finally happening. This is, I think, despite, rather than because of, the media frantically trying to whip up excitement in the election in exactly the same way that somebody tries to convince an unwilling participant that bondage really is good fun.

Meanwhile, life goes on normally for everyone not voting. Case in point are the tourists taking photographs of the telephone box outside my office. It must feature in tens of thousands of photographs, no doubt all of some smiling tourist standing in or beside it. Of course, for total authenticity, the telephone box should contain a urinating tramp and be festooned with business cards for prostitutes.