Vote

– Only a week to go.
– Till?
– Till the General Election.
– Of course.
– You hadn't forgotten?
– Not at all. I've been looking forward to it. Counting down the days till May the...
– Seventh.
– Yes. The excitement of staying up through the night, waiting for each constituency to declare. The disappointed faces of MPs staring defeat in the face. Waking up on the Friday morning to discover the identity of the next Prime Minister.
– Only that's not going to happen.
– Well, I suppose there is a chance I won't wake up till the afternoon.
– I meant, discovering who is Prime Minister. There won't be one on Friday morning. It will take days, perhaps weeks, for discussions to take place between the party leaders, for a deal to be thrashed out, for a coalition government to be formed.
– You make it sound as if we are hurtling towards some sort of chaotic political vacuum. If that analogy makes any sense.
– I'm not sure it does. But it's a pretty good description of what is going to happen.

Cherry

I don't know where the time goes. But it certainly goes somewhere, and pretty briskly to boot. The days are slipping by, and all I do is slump exhausted on the sofa and, somewhat perplexed, watch them disappear.

I still think of 2015 being in its infancy, and yet April is nearly over, with little achieved on my part to show for it. My list of books read this year is very terse, though I can blame David Copperfield for hanging around since Christmas. I have talked to several people regarding a new kitchen, which is an advance over the previous seven years, but at this rate it looks as if nothing will get decided in the near future.

The weather recently has alternated between balmy summer evenings and chilly wintry mornings. Indeed, snow and hail made brief appearances today, before the sun came out. Inspired by nature springing to life all around me, I've doused my feeble excuse for a lawn with stuff to made the grass look greener and the moss and weeds disappear. Nothing has happened yet. I keep expecting to step out of the house one morning and find all the grass has shrivelled up.

But all this is just shallow levity, something to cheer myself up. I would, if asked, all too easily bemoan my lot in life: the lack of time, the constraints of work, the unflinching mortgage. But, really, what have I to worry about? The news reports have been dominated by tragedy upon tragedy in recent days. Thousands have died in the Nepal earthquake last weekend. In previous weeks, many hundreds of immigrants have drowned in the Mediterranean attempting to cross to Europe. Civil war in eastern Ukraine rumbles on. Too much sadness to think about. And hence the shallowness.

But the blossom is pretty at the moment.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Poll

With the general election only a couple of weeks away, it has been fascinating to follow the fluctuations of the opinion polls. Or at least fascinating in the way that they don't change significantly from day to day, or even week to week, or even over the last couple of months. Although polls from individual polling organisations do bobble about by a couple of percentage points, putting the Conservatives in the lead one day, Labour the next, the BBC's rolling average has remained stubbornly immovable since the start of the campaign. Clearly, they could simply be massaging the data in a peculiar way, but one hopes they have some on-the-ball statisticians on hand who know how to calculate an average.

This may indicate that political campaigning is mostly a waste of time, in as much as voters' opinions were pretty much formed many months ago, and all the lively speechifying and confrontational debating and pointed interviewing and satirical lampooning is only so much water off a duck's back. To illustrate this, I have included a picture of a duck (below). You have to use your imagination for the water.

Cad

– It can't be that difficult to design a new kitchen. You seem to be taking a long time over it.
– There are a lot of things to decide on. And some tricky technical challenges. For instance, it all has to fit.
– Surely the kitchen stores employ highly trained specialists who know how to do this sort of thing. With their computer-aided design software. You go along, describe vaguely what you would like, and, before you know it, you have an impressive 3D plan. With, ideally, everything fitting.
– Yes, I've gone through all of that. It is a fascinating process. And yet, somehow, deeply traumatic. Seeing your future mapped out before you.
– Not your entire future: just your kitchen.
– It's all the same. It's another little slice of your life that's been parcelled up by other people, no longer in your control.
– You could try telling them what you would like. Then it's not out of your control: instead, you get your heart's desire. It's rather like an allegory of life itself.
– I'm not sure there's room to fit in one of those.
– One of what?
– An allegory. Unless you can get a slimline one.

Manifesto

– It is always exciting to see the party manifestos published. Makes you feel that the election campaign is actually under way.
– Did you think it wasn't?
– Well, to tell the truth, nothing very exciting has happened yet. I notice various politicians making pronouncements on the news programmes, and some of what some of them say sometimes makes sense. Though not always. But the manifestos are always worth looking forward to: they can be an entertaining read.
– And have you read them?
– Not exactly cover to cover. So far I've tended to skim through them to get an initial impression. Basically, just looking at the pictures. But a picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, they tend to include quite a lot of words too, which seems to miss the point of having so many pictures.
– They tend to be a little one-sided.
– Yes, I've noticed that. It would be nice to see them discussing both sides of the argument, but they do come across as blowing their own trumpets. Metaphorically.
– Glancing through the manifestos, it's sometimes difficult to tell them apart.
– The Conservative one has a lot more blue.

Recuperation

– So, what exactly have you been up to this week?
– Well, as I said, nothing much. But nothing much in a deliberate and carefully planned way, rather than just idly lounging about.
– But the net result is pretty much the same.
– To the inexperienced observer, perhaps. But the underlying intention is quite different. I think the word is staycation.
– Is that a word?
– Apparently. It is simply a holiday – or vacation, if you will – where one stays at home. I would have thought homecation was more accurate, but then doesn't rhyme quite as neatly.
– So you are basically using your week's holiday to sit at home?
– Far from it. I have been out and about, visiting local beauty spots, going on bracing walks. If anything, I am quite worn out, but in a healthy, invigorated sort of way. Like going away on holiday, but without the travelling.
– And the expense.
– That is a minor consideration, but, yes, it does work out noticeably cheaper. But the main advantage is that it takes away all the hassle of packing suitcases, sorting out travel arrangements, finding yourself in an uncomfortable hotel room, being unable to find a sun lounger next to the pool, succumbing to some exotic bug that your immune system has never encountered before, – you get the idea.
– But that is what makes going on holiday so exciting: you never quite know what's going to happen. Whereas for you, everything is fairly – predictable.
– True. Perhaps I should introduce a random element: plan my day by drawing suggestions out of a hat. Invite complete strangers around for dinner. Hang around the doctor's surgery to see what mysterious germs I can pick up. Yes, that would make it much more fun.

Egg

It is Easter Day. The sun came out this afternoon, while I was out walking on a hilltop overlooking the town. To tell the truth, the town is not all that pretty at the best of times, so the sunshine helped brighten things up, intensifying the golden yellow of the daffodils and gorse. It is a difficult thing to photograph, gorse: all those tiny yellow flowers. You would think at least one of them would be in focus.

I looked through the wine cellar to pick something to complement the lamb I was cooking for dinner. (I am not sure why lambs have to bear the brunt of Easter dining: perhaps they just have an unfortunately high profile at this time of year, with all that gambolling around. If they had any sense, they would keep their heads down until it blows over.) My wine cellar comprises half a dozen disparate bottles that I have somehow accumulated over the last few years. I think they must have been gifts, or possibly won in raffles: I don't recall buying any of them. Though I don't recall being given them, either. Selecting the right one to accompany lamb was beyond me, so I reverted to picking the oldest, the one with the thickest layer of dust, on the grounds that although fine vintage wines doubtlessly improve with age, I suspected my more modest bottles would soon reach their sell by date.

Folly

– It's as if we have collectively lost our sense of humour.
– Sorry, I wasn't listening.
– Thank you. I was saying that there seemed a dearth of amusing April Fool's pranks this morning.
– Was there? I didn't notice.
– Precisely. You could always rely on the BBC to conjure up a few tall stories, scattered amongst the serious news items.
– There was that amusing report about major business leaders writing a joint letter in support of the Conservative party.
– That was an actual news story, not an April Fool.
– Are you sure?
– Pretty sure. Though you never know for certain. Likewise, at work there was a noticeable lack of jollity.
– That's probably a good thing. Once people start larking around in the laboratory, it is a recipe for disaster.
– I never go into the laboratory.
– Well, even in the office environment, it is always wise to heed health and safety regulations. You wouldn't believe the number of people hospitalised by staplers each year.