Election time. In the church of S. Michael and All Angels, Montpelier, which I attended last Sunday, prayers were offered up for 'local elections and politicians.' In Lewes - a dearth of posters and little obvious excitement. Michael Chartier was spotted canvassing the Liberal Democrat vote on the Landport Estate by my son, Frank. Less adroit targeting of support was demonstrated by the Green candidate who solicited Frank's vote in the town centre. His eighteenth birthday falls in November, 2011.
They order matters better in France. An eighty-five percent turnout in the first round of the presidential contest is enviable. Analysing substantial Parisian support for Francois Bayrou (dubbed 'the Che Guevara of the extreme centre') Angelique Chrisafis in the Guardian highlights the importance of 'Les Bobos' (les bourgeois-bohemes) - ‘well-educated petite bourgeoisie who eat organic, like art-house cinema and have bought up large swaths of working-class Paris'. Lewes would surely vote Bayrou.
A party I would vote for is the one envisaged in one of the late David Austin's cartoons. It shows a protest march by a group of moderates. They are chanting 'What do we want? /'Gradual Reform'/'When do we want it?'/'In due course.'
In fact my second favourite all time political slogan is 'moderation or death'.
For my first I return to Paris and a photograph a friend took of a rally in the capital. A demonstrator is brandishing a placard which reads 'LA LUCIDITE EST UNE FORME DE RESISTANCE'. Impossible to imagine in this country.
But if distraction from politics is needed remember the ancient, probably aprocryphal, rustic saw, 'It is the merry first of May. Hedgerow fucking begins today'