I tried to write a song about David Cameron and Margaret Thatcher the other day. Lying in bed in the morning, grouchy and perturbed. Breathing condensation onto my phone, getting pissed off that I wasn't yet lucid enough to use my thumbs to type properly.
As always when we try to write something political, it was terrible. Full of cliches. A rhyme about her sad grave and the guilty glory he craves. Oh god. So instead I went on Twitter to see what everyone else was saying. My timeline, on the whole, as always, made me feel warm and safe. Eloquent thoughts among the GAAAH HANGOVER TITS NEW MUSIC blubber. There were opinions that reinforced my own, links to intelligent articles on the Guardian. The general consensus being that while celebrating an old woman's death made us feel uncomfortable, we were victorious bleeding heart liberals who hated the Daily Mail.
I follow over 3000 people on twitter. There's more people than that in the country (probably). But most mornings I scroll through the thoughts of just those 3000. If someone says something I completely disagree with or find offensive, I unfollow them. I have cherry picked these 3000 who reflect who I think I am. They hold up a mirror and make me feel like I belong and what I say and think is right. I know I can make an emotional statement about gay rights and it will get a positive response. Sometimes there are disagreements but that just leads to a gentle argument, the political equivalent of disputing whether a jumper is turquoise or blue.
I think a lot of the people I know and read the opinions of feel apathetic when it comes to the Government. I partly blame the likes of 'The Thick Of It'. It's part of British culture to satirise and poke fun. Thank goodness our current party leaders and Mayor are pale, insipid men in suits, if we were ever presented with a President Bartlet we wouldn't know what to do, we'd drown in pools of our own hot shocked sick.
Or so I thought. I watched the Glenda Jackson speech (above) on the bus last night. There were two teenage boys behind me talking about the best way to get a six pack and suggesting a girl they knew should stop crying all the time, "We've all got a tough life, just get over it. Go to therapy, sort your own problems out". Like many people who watched Jackson, a 76 year old woman, standing with just a few other Labour MP's near her, facing off to the grieving Conservatives, I was moved. OK. Hands up. I started crying on the bus. I'm starting to cry now.
It was like being slapped round the face. Someone shaking you awake from a languid dream of, "Oh well, they're all the same" sighs. I realised I had mistaken politics for a TV show. "Have you seen the Wire?" "No, but I have seen Boris Johnson getting attacked by Eddie Mair". Same thing? I felt like an idiot. I'd been so smug, so self-congratulatory. It was just a speech, she's just a woman, but it made me feel like I could actually do something. And that if I did, maybe it would be part of a change somewhere.
Then I went and watched 'Oblivion' which is an unmitigated bucket of rotting tripe.