I'm angry, and I'm going to stay angry
This is not my newsletter (that will be as normal on Wednesday), but it is how I'm feeling.
Sunday was Father’s Day. My fourth as a dad, and my second without one. Those two things - being a father and having one - overlapped by three years. We had a good first nine months, then most of 2020 was taken by the pandemic, then everything after that was taken by cancer.
My memory is already pretty hazy, but I think we saw my parents in September 2020 - when we were all Eating Out to Help Out - but then future visits from where they lived in the South East were scuppered by the tiered system of restrictions enforced from the October.
That Christmas period in 2020, when the Tier 2 restrictions the North East was under meant no indoor gatherings, so we didn’t see my parents. We weren’t supposed to move between regions, let alone be in the same room. No Jingle and Mingle for us. We had Christmas dinner with a laptop on the table, pointing at my son in his highchair, covered in ketchup and mashed potato. Playing peekaboo, ducking out of camera shot.
I spoke to my parents by video call in the January, when we were back under a national lockdown - that’s when I found out my dad had cancer, and would soon start chemotherapy.
The next time I saw him with my own eyes was in the ICU at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, sedated, ventilated, with 17 tubes coming out of him. They didn’t know what had happened. They didn’t know what his chances were.
I know I’m not the only one with this kind of story. There are are plenty of people with worse stories - my dad pulled through that time. He retained enough of himself to remark with his first words to me (several weeks later) - through his tracheostomy croak - that it had “all gone Pete Tong”.
I like to follow rules. I like when other people follow them. My wife makes fun of me for it.
I like to follow rules because I think it’s important, because it’s how we share our space in the world, because it’s how we respect those around us.
I knew other people weren’t following the rules. I even knew the people in power weren’t following the rules, even as they set them.
I got angry about it then. I came off the boil, but I still simmer.
Over the weekend, watching the video of dancing political aides at a Christmas party in December 2020, I got angry again.
Seeing the fallout from the Privileges Committee report, the resignation honours list, the debate and the cries of ‘does it really matter?' and ‘do the public really care?’, I got angry again.
I follow rules because I respect other people, and I respect that fragile social contract that allows us to occupy the same space as others - even if we’re different, even if we disagree.
I followed rules because I wanted my dad to be proud of me; I follow them now because I want my son to be proud of me.
That’s also why I work hard, why I try to do the right thing, and why I try to use what little influence I have over how the world works to make a little more safe space for others.
This country is such a crumbling wreck of a place. Inflation rampant. Interest rates soaring. Police Public services collapsing. Immigrants vilified. Schools told vulnerable children should be othered, banned from PE, outed to their parents whether it’s safe or not.
I cannot wait to vote. I cannot wait.
I’m going to vote with such spite and bile.
I’m going to break the lead in my little pencil, press an X through the paper and into the surface of the booth.
I will do it with such satisfaction. I will do it every single time they let me for as long as I live. You can wheel me from the care home to the Polling Station.
If my memory starts to go and I start to forget, I will pin it to the noteboard, stick it to the fridge, tattoo it onto my skin - “GO VOTE”.
If I’m on my deathbed and it’s May and we’re going to the polls, you can take me and my heart monitor and my IV drips to whichever church hall or community centre or Portakabin I have to go to and I will cast my vote.
I will work hard, and I will pay my taxes, and I will follow the rules, and I will vote.
My anger will not dim.
I don’t need perfect, I just need better.
All I need is decent, with decency.