Election day
I am not quite stoked enough (yet)
What’s the deal with lifestyle newsletters and politics? Step riiiiiight back, I expect, and then step back some more. That has certainly been my plan thus far, and is also my plan for the future 🤐. But there’s a general election here in the UK tomorrow and it feels absurd to ignore it - to just not mention it at all - especially since I have been feeling irritated by posts from English and American expats who live in France and have not even alluded to the horrifying (to me) political situation there. I mean, yes, lovely basket, thanks for showing me, I want one too now - but what does it feel like to know a load of your neighbours vote for the National Front, sorry, National Rally? Presumably that wasn’t the vibe you were after when you upped sticks. Now what? I really want to know. I can get all my analysis from wonks, but sometimes you long for the views of non-wonk observers, or at least I do. (Thank goodness for Lauren Collins - who is not a wonk but is maybe wonk-adjacent - and this evening’s Lettre Recommandée).
Anyway. The vibe I am going for here tomorrow is huge excitement, but there are only 24 hours to go and I’m not there yet. I am excited and pleased about the known outcome, but it’s not 1997, is it? There isn’t that whooping feeling of OH THANK GOD, AT LAST, although I do absolutely think ‘oh thank God, at last’. I just think it in lowercase. I feel like the whole country is thinking in lowercase, heading sedately to the polling station rather than bounding in joyful leaps.