In a truly healthy democracy, nobody would vote at all
Tell you what I miss about being young. Not the music, or the friendships, or the parties, or the sense of hope and freedom and optimism. None of that nonsense. What I really miss is the political apathy.
Twenty years ago, when I was in my late teens, political apathy was all the rage. The public, by and large, no longer seemed to be interested in politics. And this made politicians worried. Political commentators, too. They were constantly fretting about it. In newspapers, practically every political column was about the lack of interest in politics. “A worrying sign,” gulped the Economist. “Radical measures are needed,” wailed the Guardian. After the general election of 2001, in which less than 60 per cent of the electorate bothered to turn out, the BBC reported that an anxious government was brainstorming ways to cure us of “voter fatigue”.
Appropriately enough, I don’t think I cared one way or the other about apathy, at the time. Still, that’s the trouble with being young: you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Because these days, in the starkest possible contrast, we’re trapped in what appears to be an endless,
200-decibel national screaming match devoted exclusively to politics. All of us are engaged. Fanatically engaged. Furiously engaged. We all have an opinion, and we’re all angry. With politicians, and with each other.
Well, I don’t know about you. But personally, right now, I could really do with a nice dose of apathy.
If only we’d realised how lucky we were, back then, at the turn of the century, in that golden age when politics seemed barely to register on the national consciousness, and newspaper front pages were dedicated invariably to celebrities. How much happier we were, in those halcyon days, with our delicious bread and our delightful circuses.
At the time, all those anxious MPS and commentators thought political apathy was a bad sign. They assumed it meant people felt powerless to change anything. Certainly that was true, for some. But maybe the rest didn’t actually want to change anything – or at least, anything big. Maybe they took no interest in politics because, on the whole, they thought life wasn’t so bad. Could be better, could be worse. Mustn’t grumble.
A lesson for the future. Mass political engagement is a sign things are going wrong. In a truly healthy democracy, no one would vote at all.
I envy grandparents. You get all the best bits of looking after children, and few (if any) of the worst bits. All of the spoiling and indulging, none of the telling off and tidying up. I wish my son would get a move on and have children of his own, so that I can be a grandparent. Annoyingly, however, he continues to insist on being only five years old, so I suppose I’ll just have to be patient. Last week, though, I got a sense of what it must be like. We were on holiday, at a family resort in Greece, and my son spent pretty much the whole time playing with his adored older cousins – while I spent pretty much the whole time on a sunbed, just watching them. I loved it. The pure, simple, innocent pleasure of seeing small children do all the things that I, a weary old man of 38, no longer have the energy for.
The never-ending running, and shrieking, and shooting down water-slides. The delirious, bubbling laughter. Not to mention the insatiable, giggling appetite for sugar. (My son’s typical choice of breakfast from the resort buffet: one chocolate doughnut, five pancakes swimming in syrup and, to keep up his vitamin C, a bowl of cherry-flavoured jelly.)
All week long, I simply couldn’t keep up with the children. Not that I minded. Watching them was good enough for me. And that’s how I imagine it feels as a grandparent, looking after your grandchildren. The fun is vicarious. You take joy in their joy. It makes you feel benevolent, and jolly, and twinklingly mischievous: an all-year-round Father Christmas.
As it is, though, I’m still only a parent, so at the end of the week I had to take the boy home, and confiscate his ipad, and tell him off for coating the sofa in biscuit crumbs. Not much fun for him, or for me. But one day, I remind myself, he’ll be the one telling off his son for coating the sofa in biscuit crumbs. And I’ll be the one still feeding his son biscuits. I can’t wait.
Looking back, there’s only one thing I’d change about that holiday. Just one tiny blemish.
Ideally, if at all possible, I wouldn’t have lost my wedding ring.
Unfortunately, however, that’s exactly what I did. In just about the worst place you can lose a wedding ring, too. The Mediterranean Sea. It slipped off while I was swimming. It would have been hard enough to find it if I’d noticed it slipping off at the time. But in fact I didn’t notice it was missing until I’d come out of the water and was sitting at the beach bar with a margarita.
Not an easy thing to admit to your wife of nine years. Or, for that matter, to her father and her sister, who happened to be on holiday with us.
Funnily enough, our subsequent hunt through the waves was unsuccessful. So, on our first day back home, I had to go straight to a jeweller to buy a replacement. The problem, I explained to the assistant, was that I’d lost weight for my holiday. My finger must have got thinner. So from now on, I would need a smaller size.
The assistant handed me the ring sizing device. I slid it down my finger. Yes, that seemed fine.
Or at least, it did – until I tried to take the sizer off again.
It wouldn’t budge. It was stuck fast. Frantically I tugged and twisted, but it wouldn’t move. Not even slightly.
The assistant had a go. No luck. It hurt, too. In the end, it took half a bottle of hand cream to free me.
For some reason, my wife and her family seemed to find it quite amusing.