Dissolution

– So, the clock starts ticking. There are only 38 days left.
– I thought Easter was this Sunday? Don't tell me I have to give up chocolate for another five weeks?
– Till the General Election.
– Oh, right. That's crept up on us out of nowhere...
– Other than we have known it was coming for the last five years, ever since the coalition introduced fixed term parliaments.
– Did they? Whatever was the point of that? It was always the most interesting part of the process, trying to second guess when this entirely random event would occur. Other than it was always the first Thursday in May, and either four or five years after the previous one. But otherwise, it was entirely random.
– They say this promises to be the most unpredictable campaign in modern times.
– Did they predict the outcome of the last one?
– Well, not exactly, but this one will be even more unpredictable. This is off the scale of unpredictability.
– Is there an actual scale of unpredictability?
– Clearly. Perhaps you should write an election diary, capturing the key events day by day.
– That sounds like a lot of work... Has anything significant happened today?
– Of course. Today all the parties officially started campaigning, in order to get their message across to the electorate, rebut the opposition and sway the floating voter.
– And tomorrow?
– Probably more of the same.
– And the next month?
– Well, it tends to carry on in the same vein. But there will be highs and lows, surprise developments and embarrassing gaffs.
– I will look forward to those, especially the gaffs. You will let me know when they happen?

Bosworth

Today saw the interment of the Richard III, some 530 years (I think) since his ignominious death in battle in the Wars of the Roses. It is remarkable that his skeleton was ever found, seeing that someone had inconveniently built a car park over the spot, and that they could prove it was him, and that the general public has pretty much taken him to its collective heart. Admittedly, some members of the general public have raised issues of princes in towers and the like, and clearly Shakespeare did not have that high an opinion of him, but that only goes to prove that history is rather messy at the best of times, and we frequently have difficulty in knowing what to believe, in separating fact from fiction.

In a similar vein, today also saw the first televised debate of the forthcoming general election, with David Cameron and Ed Miliband not having a head-to-head debate but having two separate debates, one after the other. Which seemed something of an anticlimax, compared to the livelier confrontations of the last campaign. And rather like deciding whether Richard III was a Good King or a Bad King, it ends up being a fairly subjective judgement of which politician is worth voting for. Presumably neither will be particularly fondly remembered in 500 years' time.

Eclipse

There was a solar eclipse in these parts last Friday morning. Some of us nipped out of work to stand shivering under bleak grey skies waiting for something extraordinary to happen. And then the clouds thinned obligingly at the appropriate time to yield a glimpse of the momentous event.

As momentous events go, it was perhaps a bit of an anticlimax. As the sun was not completely obscured, but only a half-hearted ninety-something per cent, we were unfortunately not plunged into opaque blackness, which would have cheered us all up enormously, and to tell the truth it was difficult to tell whether it was actually any darker than previously. Eclipses ought to be dramatic: a minor earth tremor, perhaps, or the odd plague or two would not go amiss. In ancient days, they were omens of cataclysmic events: the birth of kings or the demise of empires. Nowadays they are an excuse for bunking off work for ten minutes.

Brief

– You just have to write more quickly.
– That's not much of a solution.
– Well, it makes sense to me. If your laptop is crashing every five minutes, you simply need to write more quickly. Or write shorter posts. Whichever works best.
– It's something of a constraint on my artistic ambitions.
– I think great artists manage to rise to these challenges. Brevity is an important skill to have. After all, you don't want to be churning out massively dull tomes by the cartload, do you?
– Don't I?
– Think of the great poets: crafting exquisite sonnets in a mere fourteen lines of perfectly formed pentameters. Or limericks: they're even shorter. And haikus. I could go on. But the point is that being succinct is not a hindrance to expressing whatever profundities you had in mind.
– Or I could get the laptop fixed.

Mischief

– I seem to be under siege at the moment.
– Really? I hadn't noticed. In what way exactly?
– There are wild animals trying to break into the house.
– They do that sometimes. It is their nature. You can't stand in the way of instinct.
– I've tried closing the cat flap. That seems to work.
– So, would I be right in assuming that these wild animals are, in fact, cats?
– Well, feral cats, for all I know. Or if not actually feral, certainly impolite. And bold: they try to creep in during the middle of the day, or even when it's obvious that there are folk about.
– Perhaps they are just inquisitive. Cats are naturally inquisitive. They will be company for you.
– My own cat is company enough: I don't really want all the neighbourhood cats as well.
– Do you think it may be something to do with the cat food you leave next to the cat flap?
– Well, possibly. But that's where the cat food lives. If I were to move it, my cat would get very confused.
– I'm sure she would cope. Cats are very resourceful. If nothing else, she could probably nip around to the neighbours' and steal their cats' food.
– It's like a vicious circle, isn't it? Where will it end?

Wedge

There is noticeably more daylight nowadays, compared with the long drab winter months. It is always a more inspiring start to the day to leave the house in daylight, rather than to skulk out in the dark, when all the neighbours are still comfortably asleep. And it is not as if you can look forward to watching dawn breaking during the drive to work, as it never turns out to be a particularly glorious daybreak when you're stuck in the traffic, trying to avoid cyclists overtaking you on every side. And it doesn't help that I drive vaguely north to get to work, so am never in quite the right position to see a glorious daybreak if one were ever to arise. At the moment I am at least leaving work in daylight, even if it's dark before I get home. But the day will come soon enough when I will be tempted to stop off on the way home in order to take a stroll somewhere picturesque, typically involving trees.

I still try to get out at lunchtime to go for a walk around the institute. There is not much to see, other than the usual urban sprawl, but at least it is a useful form of healthy exercise, even if not particularly uplifting on an emotional level. The local high street, typical of many of our town centres, seems to have broken out in a rash of pound shops. I went into one the other day in search of a door wedge, and came out with a pack of five. For a pound. It was a bargain. I only needed one, but sometimes it is useful having a few spare. Or I have been considering selling them on for a small profit. That is how many entrepreneurs got started. Re-selling things at a profit, I mean, but not necessarily door wedges. Although there may well be a untapped market there.