Filler 33

So, the orcs of Mordor have been kept at bay once more. I know there are many who see Tony Blair as Saruman, but believe me, the Tories are a whole lot worse.

This election certainly lacked the tension and excitement of previous ones. The sense of passion, the grand drama unfolding. It was a tawdry affair, grubby and half-baked, shambling wearily on towards a predestined conclusion with no noticeable enthusiasm. A tedious collage of self-promoting politicians and hectoring windbag hacks facing off on the airwaves to witter about irrelevant shite. As if those involved were making a concerted effort to kill off politics in the country, once and for all.

And why not?

I did have, as I recorded, something of a frisson on the night itself, watching the meretricious BBC coverage in all its strangely-gripping vapidity. But in retrospect that was more a resonance, a visit from The Ghost of Elections Past, than anything to do with this one. The reporters and pundits had to pretend there was some grand meaning to each result, some overarching thesis to be knitted out, but the real story, for me, was in the humdrum details of democracy in action. The halting, nervous voices of the returning officers, the smattering applause for deposit-losing novelty candidates, the verbal tics and formulaic speeches of the victors, the drawn faces of all those major party flunkies standing in unwinnable nowhere seats.

That's why not.

The weekend, then: little to report. I went to a sauna, for the first time in ages. Got dirty, got clean. There was a time when I used to do the sleaze thing a lot, but so long ago I can barely remember it. It was, as ever, nice to get the sense of still being worth something on the open market, depressing to witness there being a market at all. Nice to do physical things with physical bodies, to be reminded of the touch and texture and solidity of flesh. To taste something real. Depressing to think of the unreal.

Anyway, it got me out of the house.

And I got my hair cut, of course. Such are the rituals by which we measure out our lives.
Posted by matt at May 8, 2005 07:56 PM