I saw the political debate whilst I was at the gym tonight.
When I say that I saw it, that is exactly what I mean, because of course I was on the bicycling machine which has a screen in front of you. This does not show appropriate pictures, like oncoming traffic with taxi drivers making rude hand signals, or old ladies wondering whether you will run them over if they step off the kerb. Instead it is magically, although boringly, linked to television programmes, and although there were pictures, there was no sound.
In fact I rather liked this. It was the exact inverse of my usual experience of politics. As you know, we don’t have television, and get all of our useful information from the radio, where you can hear people’s voices, but have no idea at all what they look like. This has spoiled a couple of trips to Madame Tussaud’s.
It was absolutely intriguing, and also gave me something to think about other than the dull discomfort of cycling ten uphill kilometres unenlivened by worries about traffic or suicidal pedestrians.
To start off with I had got to work out who was who. Even I recognised Boris Johnson, so that was easy, and it wasn’t difficult to work out that the brown one was probably Sajid Javid, but the other three remained mysterious.
I watched them closely, trying to work out what sort of people they might be by imagining them as taxi customers, or possibly taxi drivers. I counted how often they blinked when they were trying to get their points across, and watched their hand gestures and the directions in which their eyes swivelled when they talked. All of these things help you know when somebody is telling the truth.
These are not political pages, so I will not upset anyone by saying that I liked any of the candidates. This is because we all know that to remark that a politician looked as though they believed in what they were saying is just asking to be trolled on Twitter for ever by nutters who promise to come round to your house and teach you that a woman’s place is in the kitchen. I know all about this because I had a book about it from the library a couple of weeks ago.
I would not know if I had a Twitter troll in any case, because I do not read Twitter, having never really grasped what it is about. I know that you have got to follow people, but how you do it, or why, I have no idea, and think that it sounds like a way to get very irritated in your spare time instead of reading a good book.
I have got a good book at the moment. It is a history of the Caesars. Now they knew how to do decisive leadership. Michael Gove is not in the same ball game.
All the same, I thought that one or two of the candidates looked rather terrifyingly mental, and even the most reassuring of the others looked as though they might be scary enough to frighten the EU into giving us a good exit deal.
All of them seemed to be wearing long socks, having been unkindly seated by the BBC on the sort of stools that make your trousers ride up almost to your knees. Very wisely, they seemed to have had the foresight to plan for this and borrowed knee socks from the Boy Scouts for the occasion, which I thought was probably a good sign for their future organisational capacity, the country is not lost yet.
I was disappointed when it ended, although I had to rush back to work in any case. I had to miss the swim as well. This was because I had been late to work in the first place, because of taking Oliver back to school, although the water still being cold helped to harden my resolve.
It was the last time that I shall ever take Oliver to Aysgarth. Obviously I will take him up to Gordonstoun, but I won’t ever take him back to Aysgarth any more.
We were saddened by this, because we have had some very happy and interesting journeys. We have debated all sorts of things, we have discussed everything from religion to pornography to why the headmaster thinks that it matters which sorts of biscuits you eat. We have talked about things that make us happy, and things that make us sad, and how you might make friends, and the importance of choosing the right people to be friends with, and whether the junior master might really have kissed the pretty student teacher, or perhaps the boy who said he saw them made it up.
They have been splendid journeys, and I am sorry they are over. Much of Oliver’s travel to Gordonstoun will probably be by aeroplane, without me, but in any case we are entering into a new beginning. It is all going to be very different now.
I hugged him under the big archway for the last time, and he belted off. Just two more weeks to go.
The picture is almost like yesterday’s, only a day further on and with an added bumble bee. I think it is the most gorgeous flower.
