Sob, I feel ill
So...
I finished my proposal for my novel and sent it to a few agents. I got that done on Friday and I felt at leisure to write and play with photos again. But I spent Sat running through the katori photos, hence the sudden explosion of photos that have no swords in in this post. But bank holiday was wet, mostly, and I was ill. And I feel like crap today. Sucky. And tomorrow I have to vote and take my driving test.
The driving test... Ah ha, ah ha, ah ha ha ha ha. I was quite irrationally confident that despite my shaky driving ability I would pass. Now, I feel irrationally pessimistic or maybe realistically pessimistic. My instructor seemed to think that I wouldn't pass and suggested that I reschedule. But fuck it, it's 60quid and there is a chance that I MIGHT pass...
Then, I would like to buy my own car (maybe an automatic) and practice and, if I can persuade him, I would like my FIL to teach me all that advanced driving stuff he knows... so maybe I could be safer...
So yeah.
And then, I gotta vote. I can't not vote, I feel that when people have died to get me the vote (or rather an entire generation of women working diligently in factories in the first world war got me the vote, but hey, the suffragettes helped) I have to vote. But, who to vote for? I'm not gonna vote for Labour as they're crazy. Then there's the Lib Dems, on the one hand, Nick Clegg did really well in the debates, on the other hand, their policies are crazy and they continually leaflet me about cracks in the pavement and crime. We live in a lib dem controlled area, you see, and everyone in Winchester is old... except the young people. But I don't care about cracks in the pavement, Winchester has no crime to speak of, yet the council want to waste my time (and trees) to send me surveys to fill in about my 'impression' of crime... Yet do they provide me with a usable bus service, access to an NHS dentist, a swimming pool that is open for more than half the day or decent NHS services? Uh, no. And since they run the council in this area, this failure is on their watch, I think, rather than Labours. And, hold on, the Lib Dem guy has sent me several letters of bumpf in this election campaign, but did he reply to my letter I wrote him a year ago??? So that leaves the conservatives, who have an interesting idea called Big Society. At it's best, I think it would give control of their neighbourhood to small groups, improve social cohesion and help all the people of my generation who seem to be signing up for voluntary organisations in droves (or is that what people do once they get a job?) to be effective. At it's worst, it could lead to many petty Napoleans and Nimbys setting arbitrary rules. But hey, they'd be cheaper than the state. It is, I think, the only new idea in this election, and something of a 180 degree turn-around from the Thatcher's ideas about society. Labour are basically fighting a losing battle with the line 'we know what we're doing and we'll muck it up less than the tories', the lib dems are basically saying they're different, which they are, they're obsessed with pavements. Still, I don't know who to vote for and I've not yet read their manifestos...