Lurking

"Christmas is just around the corner."

I hate that phrase, it makes Christmas sound like a right pervert. What exactly is Christmas *doing* just around the corner? Creepily touching itself in a dark alley and waiting for us to walk past. Naff off Christmas you gross old bastard.

I like Christmas. Like it a lot. Well... do I? I don't actually care much at all for actual Christmas day. I like the 1-24 December. I like Advent. But I can't prance about pronouncing that "Actually I love Advent." without being the biggest nob on the planet. I'm already a gobby, environmentally obsessed, left wing comedian with her eyes on a gender neutral socialist future: I can't add being a twat about the semantics of tinsel to my list of irritating personality features.

I think a lot of this year's advent is going to be ruined by the election. I have to use social media a lot for work and at the moment looking at my feed is like sticking my head in a nutribullet. Except that there's no delicious smoothie to slurp out of my gaping head wounds; it's factless arguments and terror.

There's no easy answer. Between 2 and 4am on Wednesday when I was lying in a sweaty panic attack trying to calm down about the whole thing I veered wildly between: "Maybe I should take a few days off and get REALLY knowledgeable about the whole thing so I know WHY I believe the things I do." and "Maybe I should shut off the internet all together and just not worry?"

To me, my vote goes Left because I have disabled friends, hospital worker friends and teacher friends who cannot cope any longer with the current status quo. I don't believe most politicians (my girl C Lucas being the exception) and I don't believe the papers either... so, all I can go on is the people on the ground and they are at breaking point. So, I don't know whether the left would be any better at having a go, but at least it might be a change for the foot soldiers? That's my thinking anyway.

The whole ridiculous charade is parading down the street being ludicrous and holding up traffic, while Christmas holds its dick in its hand round the corner waiting to spaff itself all over our faces the second December flicks on.

Perhaps Advent will go some way to blocking it all out? I am certainly capable of downing Chocolate Baileys at an alarming rate and once I've gone through a bottle of that I find most of the world is blocked out. It's blocked out by the carpet because I am lying face down in it singing along to Nat King Cole and wondering why I don't have tinsel up all year round.

Things are just PRETTIER at Christmas. Everything is prettier, everything is more hopeful. Perhaps that's why this election feels so... so rude to be plonking it's disastrous arse -disastrarse TM - in the middle of the whole shiny affair. Surely an election should be the epitome of hope...? Each team laying out the ideas the best minds in the country have come up with? Each team able to use the funds of an extremely wealthy nation to power some BIG IDEAS and have a great offering? Shouldn't this be exciting and hopeful? Why does it feel like we're trying to blow an empty paper bag over the line... why is it all so distinctly un-fun? I think we deserve better.

I suppose that's another reason I lean to the left... because at least they seem to want to try. I get that money doesn't grow on trees and even if it did we'd have cut it down for short term financial gain, but, at least there are ideas in there that don't paint Britain as a dismal failure that should only be focusing on the leaks. We're a pretty successful country... there's so much we could be doing and for ages it's felt like we've been told we can't but not really why. If we need some necessities like schools and libraries and health care, and there's a pot of money... to me, it makes more sense to find out how to put more money in the pot rather than to just cut the necessities? I dunno. I'm a brainwashed hippy I expect.

I should have studied politics instead of spending my time watching Christmas stories where the moral is always something saccharine about it feeling good to help the needy.

I can't wait to put my tree up on Sunday and have a bit of respite from feeling this continual dual action guilt and inefectualness that has settled on my shoulders like an unwanted pashmina. I feel at all times completely powerless and completely like I'm wasting my power. I'll string the lights and light the candles and listen to Nat King Cole take away the outside world and lie on my carpet with the Baileys warming my throat and I'll let that dirty old Christmas jump out from round the corner and flash me what's under his mac. Bring it on, because anything but this.