Last year, my friend Tom signed me up as a member of the Labour Party. Unbidden, and with no cost to myself. I tell you this because it means that occasionally Tony Blair sends me mail thanking me for my hard work, but recently a somewhat bulkier missive struck the Sagremor doormat, again from our great leader. It turned out I was eligible to vote in some internal labour post election, which I actually did online. i voted for a miss Philomena Muggins, entuirely because of her name, which is the best I have ever heard outside Music Hall. I had no qualms at the time, but since then have felt the icy hands of fear running up the trouser legs of intuition. What if her policies are decidedly lacklustre and her outlook wholly unsuitable? What if scores more labour voters are in the grip of whimsy? Perhaps she changed her name specially? In short, what have I done?

This morning, whilst packing some sandwiches in a plastic bag for work (to take to work, that is, not as work.) I noticed it was branded 'Heritage.' Well I don't mind telling you I let out a huge sigh of relief! Here was I, thinking I was contributing to the huge piles of non-biodegradable waste which litter the land, but it turns out that there's a rich tradition in the venerable 'Nisa Lifestyle' company of making the things. Probably out of hessian, or something, in the olden days.
I'm sure the formation of 'olden days' is a rare survival of an archaic grammatical form, but sadly I can't remember what.

Rumours of my death...

I know it’s been a while, but what tempts me back is BBC News. Allow me to explain. A few weeks ago I moved flats. On the plus side, the new flat’s incredibly central, but on the downside, it’s a hole. It does however come with a television, something I’ve not owned (by choice) for two years. As a consequence there’s very little I do watch (I know, I know, I shall miss out on all the goings-on at Albert Square) save the news, which I try to catch daily, usually succeeding. However, my main gripe is the endlessly unnecessary computer graphics to illustrate fatuous points. This is the sort of thing that’s supposed to annoy old people, but I find it insulting that they feel the need to show us some scales when Gordon Brown’s weighing up his budget or somesuch. I fear I have been spoiled by radio.
Whilst not watching the television I have been reading Wuthering Heights, as it’s something I’d never got around to before. Finished it a couple of days ago, and still cannot decide whether I like Heathcliff, or utterly despise him. I also come to wonder what your feeling on this reflects about yourself. He seems without any redeeming feature excepting his passion for Cathy, and everyone else, including his own son, whom he pimps for power and influence, can go to hell in a proverbial handbasket, and indeed from Lockwood’s descriptions, are possibly already there. Being a university student I took advantage of free access to an improbably number of academic journals, but am amazed to find much of the criticism contained therein to be denser than the novel itself, and not the sort of thing I want to stare at for hours on a screen decoding.
On a slight tangent, as the Bronte/Bell work above came from a second-hand bookshop somewhere, I’m going to devote a small amount of space to praise of libraries. I rejoined mine last week after moving to across the road from its portals, and it came as something of a shock to remember that you can take any books you want, for free, then when you’re done, take them back and get some more, equally without charge. I feel that if more people were exposed to this idea library membership would flourish. Granted, its fiction section is remarkably small for the size of the building, but with a bewilderingly large choice of Maigret stories available, but I’m not complaining, just working my way through the Atwood. I do promise more soon, and don’t mean to sound quite so grumpy. The Festival is almost upon us, and there’s an expectant buzz in the air. Bloody bees.