Last week we had a Night of the Short Fuses. It was my fault. Like a fool I held an election-night party. Never again. I have never known some of my chums to behave so badly. Perhaps it was the mix of voters: eight Labour, one Green and one Ukip. Yes, one Ukip. I’m as surprised as you are.
Rosemary didn’t make it. She couldn’t be fagged to come, and missed the party from hell. Lucky she. Because the arguing and screaming started early – even before the telly coverage – about anything and everything: the motives of the minx Sturgeon, whether Putin was a pleasant fellow or not, and was Ukip racist. Then it all got rather personal: from who was/wasn’t being condescending to who was offensive, who was talking crap, who was horribly drunk, pigheaded, or should stop standing up, red-faced, screaming and bellowing, and try listening to someone else for a change, or was a liberal wet, a dinosaur or a fascist and should shut up or “fuck-off”.
But most shocking of all, I found, was that nearly everyone protected and stuck up for the Ukip person, perhaps because she/he (I’m not naming anyone) was the only one and shouldn’t be ganged up on, so instead everyone ganged up on me, I felt, and my two anti-Ukip allies, even though we were only trying to have a reasoned discussion, which we couldn’t have, because of all the yelling, tantrumming, foot-stamping and threats to go home.
Good job Mavis didn’t come either. She was whacked-out from weeks of heavy canvassing for Labour, but she did have her own screaming row with a stranger in the swimming pool, who proudly admitted to voting Tory. “You have blood on your hands,” roared Mavis to this woman, and had she come here, we might have had blood on the walls, but instead she sensibly went home to lie in a darkened bedroom, where she remained for 24 hours, in despair.
But she will rise again, and so will we. Because we must. And don’t argue with me, or I’ll invite you to an election party.
