Life Less Literary

I was up late-ish (later than Gill, anyway) coding tonight - and as I was about to go to bed, the News 24 coverage of the Brent East by-election results swung into action. I couldn’t help hanging around to see a little bit of what might just be history. But I was knackered, and at around 1am I drifted into sleep…

By some quirk of fate, I woke from a dream (which I don’t remember at all, let alone as clearly as this morning’s) 30 seconds before the returning officer stepped up to start reading the results at 2.30am. This being a by-election, and the first in a long time, there were plenty of bizarre candidates to step up onto the stage. One of the first up, dressed something like a laughing cavalier, yelled as he arrived on stage “they think it’s all over, it is now”. I cringed in my seat - it felt like one of those things which people think up in a moment of apparent clarity, then spend months planning for, only to find that, when their moment of glory comes, it wasn’t one-tenth as funny as it seemed inside their head. So I was a little surprised when I found out that this person was Aaron Barschak, whose main claim to fame was succesfully gatecrashing Prince William’s 21st birthday party dressed as Osama bin Laden, but who also claims to be a comedian. This, and Barschak’s antics throughout the count, were so unfunny they were painful. I can only think that he must’ve been being post-post-post-ironic, or something.

Anyway, the elections were decent viewing, the Lib Dem’s win a deserved one, and I realised that funnily enough there are few things I enjoy more than watching politicians get their moment of glory and jubilation (the night of 1st May 1997 was one of infectious euphoria and regrettable dancing).