Demos Rousseau

There's a general election afoot in the kay-of-yu, and the absence of excitement is palpable.  We, the electorate, don't want to have to make life-changing decisions.  That's the politicians' job.  We just want to vote in alignment with our prejudices, like our forebears, and then wash our hands of the consequences.  Is that too much to ask?

I'm almost minded not to vote, for the first time since my teens.  It's too intimidating.  No-one, not the politicians, the pundits, the academics nor the public, knows what's for the best.  They might as well get an astrologer to present Newsnight.  "As Venus is entering Sagittarius, you might want to think about opening a mini-cash ISA and voting UKIP."

The trouble is I can't spoil my ballot paper.  I'm 48 years old.  That kind of thing is fine if you're 19; it comes across as committed, passionate and charming, albeit cock-headed and simplistic.  At 48, you just look like a dick.  It's the political equivalent of a feather cut and a tight Fred Perry polo shirt on a twenty stone plasterer.  Everyone you happen across thinks the same: sober-up, mate.

How d'you like your eggs? Easter.

Well, hello there.  I've allowed another sizeable gap in my postings to emerge.  Sorry about that; I'll do better from now on.

The bee-half and I are just back from an Easter jaunt to the Netherlands.  I've posted before about why I love the low countries: they're just so well-run and sensible - a pleasure to be in.  Yes, Holland lacks the raw drama of Andalusia or the Amalfi Coast, but I'm a 48-year-old homeowner from south east England, not Peter the Great, tsar of all the Russias.

We didn't take our bikes with us this time as the missus had a squitty tummy in the days before we left and didn't want to spend Good Friday squatting in ditch behind a windmill.  This turned out to be an inspired choice.  We travelled by train instead and hired town bikes when we got there.

You really get to know a place when you've visited at least half a dozen of its neighbourhoods.  Without doing this, you just hang around the middle of town, like a giant pigeon.  Utrecht for example, a city we've visited several times previously, opened up its charming hinterland to us once we had put in a few miles.  On bike touring trips we generally arrive there having already done 50kms, and all you want to do then is try and get the crease out of your arse before the next day's exertions.

Life-affirming rawk

I went to see AC/DC on Saturday night.  I had seen them once before but that was in 1988 and so on longer counts - 1988, when both they and I cut a wonderfully seemly figure at a gig.  I'll be honest, I was rather dreading it, but my best friend, who also accompanied me on that outing 28 years ago, insisted.  And I have to say, it was brilliant.

AC/DC have never been a self-regarding band, and this has stood them in good stead.  The idea of a grown man flailing around in front of 80,000 people while dressed as a 1950s schoolboy was as ridiculous then as it is now - no more and no less.  It's meant to be pantomime.  People who harrumph at the band are guilty of a category error.  They are wrongly reading AC/DC as a heavy metal or even heavy rock band.  They're not; they're a rock n roll band - a very different beast.  They don't take themselves seriously so why should you?

It was a real shot in the arm to have my worst middle-aged fears confounded.  We're not done yet, by god.  Just a bit saggy is all.

Po-Mo-phobia

I had an odd night, last night.  I went to a 'talk' given by the writer of the Drunken Bakers, Barney Farmer.  That's a Viz strip, for the classicists among you who are unfamiliar with it.  You really should get yourself  up to speed with it, however, if we're ever going to be friends.  Here's a handy cook's tour of the oeuvre for you.

I say 'talk', but that's taking heroic liberties with the generally accepted meaning of the term.  Barney Farmer was drunk, not legless - not by any manor of means - but drunk.  Artist Mark Lecky lobbed a few topics at him and Farmer just started riffing.  It sounds horrific written down like this - a wretched cross between a 60s 'happening' and free-jazz.  In reality it was wildly entertaining and very, very funny.  As with most good comic writers, Farmer is fluent.  And his fluency is aided when he gets out of his own way.  Too much self-awareness would be ruinous for him - hence, the drink.

My companion and I left before the end.  I was enjoying it, but the bar ran out of beer and I started to feel a bit ill at ease with the atmosphere.  There's a danger with work like Farmer's in that it attracts the wrong sort, people who like being associated with things, dark things that their parents would fear and dislike.  The excessive drinking attracts the same sort.  It suits their post-college dalliances with nihilism.  These are dalliances for the most part.  The bourgeois self-preservation gene kicks in after about 30 months and they sober-up, get promoted and buy property.  Working class people don't dally with drink and drugs because there's no safety net for them.  Who's going to bail you out if you screw up?  Your parents?  Forget that.  They haven't the money or the wherewithal any more than you do.  Consequently, intoxication is either kept on a short leash or it becomes one's vocation.  You learn to live with it and still earn, knowing that it'll be with you forever.

The DBs is very bleak; it's funny too, but the humour comes more from the framing device than from the work itself.  The fact that someone has taken to the time and trouble to set this down and get it published in a comic is hilariously inappropriate.  None of the strips goes anywhere either.  They're just exercises in voyeurism.

Pain, fatigue, life, the universe and everything

It's warm in London for once, properly warm.  This is to be welcomed of course.  Unfortunately, I'm a bit out of practice with heat, as it's been grey and cool in the capital for about forty months or so.  This is why I forgot until after I'd turned in last night that the only fan I own was in the loft.  Being bone idle, I couldn't summon up enough enthusiasm to clamber up there and fetch it, which meant I got a wretched night's sleep - absolutely wretched.

Today has dragged something diabolical; I won't lie to you.  I've done very little.  My knee hurts and the soles of my feet and my hip have jumped on the bandwagon too.  This isn't helping my resolve.  Please, please make it stop.

Ennui Go

Oh, God, I'm bored today.  This is due to a number of factors.  Firstly, it's a glorious day out - sunny, still and warm.  That doesn't help.  Also, the office is as warm as a geriatric ward, as it must always be, to allow our, presumably consumptive, bought-ledger clerks to go about their duties.  Anything below thirty Celsius and they down tools.  Finally, I'm 47 and generally, therefore, bored almost literally shitless.

It's an odd age, 47.  I have tons of money, but realise I can no longer spend it on champagne and KFC without killing myself.  So I have the wherewithal but not the chassis for the journey.  It's like being given the run of a harem but without being able to take your trousers off.  This is opposite of one's salad days of course, when the only thing that stops you carousing is indigence or your finals, not the thought of a disappointing cholesterol test or a bout of mediaeval indigestion.

Best of the west

We flew back from Shannon yesterday after having spent a few days with my parents.  There was some congestion around Heathrow, and after sitting in what I assume must be the Bovingdon stack for a while, we performed a long slow loop over east London at about eight thousand feet before straightening up and 'establishing' for final approach

The light was great and the views spectacular.  I could see individual people around the foot of 1 Canada Square and could read the advertising hordings inside Brisbane Road.  It's amazing what a bit of half-decent light and