I began another day of joy and constant happiness by rising today, conscious that I must vote, and thereby change the world. I pushed my way through the masses to find the place empty except for two tables stocked with two servers, and one manager standing to the left. "Where are they all?" I asked, "It was busy this morning," they lied. It's always, "It was busy earlier," innit?
Council elections do not draw the crowds, County Council ones appear to draw less, as the council appears to that wee bit further off from the people.
The poll is in the museum hall and the manager is well known to me. The six of us chatted, there was plenty of time to do so, while they prepared my voting slip and refused to answer my question as to "Why is there no SNP on here?"
Now, we have a choice of five individuals, all of whom wish to become a County Council Councillor. The usual parties, Labour, Tory, Reform, Lib Dem, and Green. I looked up the names of the five men, unusually all men, and found little about them. The Lib Dem, like almost all the Lib Dems standing in this town comes from Chelmsford, the Reform lives here but comes from Colchester, the rest are local, which is how it ought to be.
But what do we know of them? Almost nothing!
One states his favourite biscuit is 'Hobnobs.' Surely we can ask deeper questions that this?
Another is a fellow councillor here known to one other councillor who attends our kirk. So we have some info, and he likes 'Hobnobs' also. For the other three I found nothing.
This surely is not the way to seek election, surely they must make some political statement somewhere along the line? This leaves most people voting for the party, not the individual, which is more important in such elections as opposed to general elections. The person is nearer to the people here, why are we so poor in offering information? I of course ignore the Twitter feeds which daily fill the page with Reform candidates withdrawing, or being withdrawn, by party or constabulary.
I scribbled my vote to await the result in due course, and set off for Tesco.
£35:20 later I left the friendly checkout girl and took my heavy bag back to the museum. Here I give a little support by buying their excellent honey, this comes from bees living in a nearby village. The young girl in charge is well known to me, well known for making me spend money I do not have. This meant I had to resist her pressure and only spent £10:50, then had to ransack my pockets to find enough loose change to give her some £1 coins as they had not left. I was then allowed to tour the latest exhibition in the museum.
This was magnificent. The new curator has made changes and vastly improved the displays, building on what went before. I was impressed with what she has done with the Great War stuff, and other local history is well noted. This is indeed a very good local museum and deserves much mention. The big exhibit was the between wars art deco stuff produced by the main businesses, the cloth and silk mills, in the town. This reminded me of one of my aunts, she was a child of the 20s and much in her house spoke of those days. Being old I find a connection to the past via aunts and uncles, as well as parents, especially when some of them were born in the Victorian age, and their ideas, books, and attitudes spoke of times past. Much better attitudes than today I hear you say. Possibly, as most of them saw two wars, a general strike, near poverty, and a depression, that gives a different view on life.
Our new recycling bins arrived today. Because of lack of space we had been promised the non-standard boxes, we got both! Coming home from Tesco's I ate and fell asleep, when I awoke we were surrounded by bins. These are not being used until June, 3 weeks away, and take up a lot of space. Just how this will work will be intriguing, as we have 3 cars already, and with two flats about to be leased possibly 2 more, plus bins, life will be great in the car park. We also have 8 boxes now! I'm to weary to care today, maybe tomorrow I'll look out again.
