THE General Election?
Yah boo sucks. The climax of the chase for promotion from the Scottish Championship? Whatevs. Hugh Grant endorsing Danny Alexander? Could. Not. Give. A. Fig.
The reason for my indifference towards pretty much anything taking pace beyond the end of my sizeable conk is - and it's not a euphemism - I've got the builders in. Two of them. They're ripping my window recesses to shreds, fitting a damp course, putting new plasterboard recesses in place then, I expect, leaving in their wake a worryingly long snagging list and a house crested with plaster dust so fine it'll take a hundred years for me to expel it from the crannies of my hi-fi.
It's very upsetting. The flat is so cramped I've been banished to the bedroom to write. Unlike the redoubtable George Orwell during his time on Jura towards the end of his life, the vista from my window is not of wild land, boiling seas and stern skies but a drooping Sky cable, a red sandstone wall, a downpipe and a scalene triangle filled with grey cloud. Even Orwell would struggle to overcome such inauspicious circumstances. #justsaying
In here the cats are also most distressed. Morris, the more dominant and bulky of the two brothers, has crammed his considerable mass into a new nook, cowering as Workman One and Workman Two bang, drill and hammer next door (though it might be the insipid playlist of Smooth Radio which has given him the hump; I wouldn't blame him). Imagine a fat Dolph Lundren in a Wendy house and you're almost there.
Perversely, Morris's brother Louis, who is the very opposite of the French expression "bien dans sa peau", seems largely unencumbered by anxiety as a result of the hullabaloo taking place through the wall. Admittedly, he's sitting stock still wheezing gently to himself at a time when typically he's fast asleep in the arms of his big brother (you don't want to know what they get up to), only shifting his head when Workman One croons along to the radio (Three Little Birds by Bob Marley seems to be a favourite).
It's all rather jolly if you submit to the chaos rather than resist it, though. The foreman assures you the work will take a day; you know it won't. You ask the tradesmen to keep the door shut lest the cats escape; they nod and leave it open anyway. But you're in no position to stamp your feet - the workmen have you by the proverbials.
There are parallels to be drawn with our politicians here but I'm not the man to do it. I've got the builders in.
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