horsemouth loves to vote

as an old person (and despite the fact that he disdained it for years) horsemouth loves to vote. 

and what dropped through his letterbox today but a voting card. 

he won't get the chance to actually do it until may 6th but horsemouth loves planning ahead. 

 - mayor of london (two votes. first choice and second choice. khan looking like a cert. from the polls). 

the lib dems have had a bit of a problem with their candidates already.   this  election was postponed a year (because of covid) so their original candidate (siobhan benita) dropped out (saying she couldn't afford to wait), there was then a shortlist of two candidates. now you can check this against the wikipedia page. and horsemouth has seen the footage that forced the second candidate geeta sidhu-robb to crash out.

why can't we all just get along? mutters horsemouth to himself. (he's also a little gobsmacked that the lib dems are so stuck for candidates that this one looked like a runner). 

anyway her replacement luisa porritt is not jonathon porritt's (friends of the earth) daughter seems perfectly sane. 

also up for a vote this time round; london assembly member for north-east constituency and london members of london assembly (it's a mixture of first past the post and proportional representation). 

meanwhile things move towards the AGM of the collective endeavour and the election of  a management committee. if horsemouth is honest with you he thinks his vote is pretty much wasted in larger elections (he just likes doing it) - where the democracy is the levers of power aren't - whereas in the collective endeavour he actually thinks people's votes matter and influence what subsequently happens. 

yesterday horsemouth sat out in the garden and read. he began and finished off agota kristof's the notebook (in a way the story of how she came to write it is more interesting, the novel itself is a tin drum kind of thing overpraised by slavoj zizek). 

then he started on philip k. dick's the man in the high castle (he pauses here to tell you how much he likes penguin classic's new cover for it, the world map in braille - or at least in those kind of raised bobbles beloved by modern architects for their cassette panels). it remains genuinely shocking as, by implication, it reveals the world round us and our opinions as a mere historical accident. 

after that he watched the fall of yugoslavia. as officials within the communist party and army generals ferment and pander to ethnic nationalism for the sake of their own careers (leading to carnage). 

it's a beautiful bright sunshine-y morning. horsemouth plans to listen to the radio on the front steps in the morning and then finish off man in the high castle in the back garden this afternoon. he's decided to try some light, easy to read, stuff, to get his reading back up to speed. 

tomorrow a walk with enza. friday is bandcamp friday. may 6th the chance to vote.