How Not to Win a Local Election

I’m being stalked. First it was the letters through the door every 2.64 minutes. Delivered by hand by the mysterious minions of the group of stalkers better known as The Big Three. Then the stalkers started knocking at my door. Now the phone calls have started.

When the phone rang I of course hoped it was the man of my dreams. It could, in fact, have been the man of my dreams. He sounded suave and sophisticated and asked if I was me, the Physicist or the Lawyer. I was momentarily confused and said I was the Physicist. I hastily corrected myself. The Physicist is in Harrogate so I could hardly have been her. But then he broke the bad news to me. He was calling on behalf of one of the Big Three. I don’t like to think that the man of my dreams spends his leisure hours as a stalker.

At first the attention they paid me was mildly amusing. It gave me some spurious sense of being loved, to know that the fate of the local council and hence the whole of the British electoral system and the future of the Europe, the world and extraneous black holes was in my slightly mud-stained and keyboard-worn hands. The letters extolling the virtues of the Big Three and their exciting policies re my locality, including opening the footbridge (now mysteriously achieved without particular reference to any of them), the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity (although I suspect it is a political stench) made me smile gently at their dedication to the petty, superficial and minor-soap-opera-esque. I chortled humorously at the fact that they all were innocently espousing the exact same policies re the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity.

Now it’s really getting beyond a shaggy dog story. The footbridge is worn to a Tarzan-like rope structure with the amount of walking the minions have performed upon its newly polished surface. The speed humps have humped into even larger edifices with all their cunning driving with their wheels on either side of them. The lamp posts are completely eroded by minions’ shaggy dogs. The drains are as drained as I am. The amount of paper they have inserted through doors will have felled at least as many trees as they are trying to save. All our letterboxes are suffering leaflet fatigue and our doorbells are receiving expensive counselling due to the trauma of prospective councillors poking nonchalantly at them.

And so now it is very clear who I shall vote for. The Small One. Who put ONE leaflet through my door and trusted my ability to read. OK, the Welsh was challenging, but I assumed he was interested in the speed humps, the lamp posts, the drains, the felling of innocent trees and the unknowable smell emanating from the vicinity.