Vote for me!

There's a by-election in my ward this week, apparently. The candidates for UKIP and the Conservative Party have been prowling around. We haven't received our polling cards yet, which is worrying. But frankly, I don't know who to vote for. Probably Labour; in the absence of a Marxist party.
I'm not a Marxist, at least not a deliberate one. I haven't read Marx- I've tried a few times, but I can barely get past the opening sentences. It's ironic- a body of work championing people who sell their labour, and you need a load of time and money to sit around reading and absorbing it. Anyway, I'm also a Roman Catholic, and I don't believe that everything can be solved by money. I believe human beings have souls- at least, I do, and my wife does.
But capitalism does not work. It is not fit for purpose. It was an improvement on medieval feudalism, but it needs to be replaced, and fast. The Labour Party won't address this, though, and none of the other parties will, either. So on we go, with politicians acting like celebrities and an electorate who, like me, can hardly be bothered with it all; whilst the world's economy crumbles, human beings kill each other and subjugate each other, and the real work doesn't get done.
I still blame Margaret Thatcher.
The Conservative Party lobbyist was a hippo in a blue blazer and grey flannel trousers. I was polite enough when I declined his leaflet- my wife simply came out and said: "I'd rather hang myself" to him, God bless her. It can't be much fun being a lobbyist, of any party. The only people excited by politcs are nutcases. So the people who want to stop and argue with you, are all nutters, but then so are the people who are passionately on your side. You must yearn for indifference. You must want to give out your quota of leaflets, feel like you've done your bit, then go home.
The temperatures have cooled, thank God. I haven't really written anything this week. I posted off two entries to Paragraph Planet, but two paragraphs of 75 words each (including the titles) didn't feel like writing. The Microhorror site is back, with a neat selection of new horror flash fictions, but sadly, although probably wisely, they turned down my last entries.
The truth is, I've been in the doldrums for a good few days. I don't know what to write, or who to write it for. I'm barely reading anything. I feel like I've been sleepwalking.
I was sort of hoping that Microhorror would publish at least one of my stories, just to make me feel lucky again, feel like a writer. I appreciate that Nathan Rosen must pick the stories he feels are the best, and that mine weren't up to scratch. But they were all I had out there at the time, and waiting to hear about them was like waiting for the thunderstorms. Which never came.
Then I got a letter from my solicitor- an ongoing headache concerning my family- and I was scrabbling around to trying to get an appointment, and looking through documents, trying to look intelligent and not taking any of it in. This was horrible, cold-porridge real life, and I ached (and still ache) get away from it all, and lose myself in a creative project.
The legal business made me jittery, and made my wife jittery, and we got tetchy with each other. Over the weekend, though, we calmed down, reassured each other, and now, at the beginning of the week, we're feeling a bit more hopeful. We're even thinking about getting away for a short break, something I wasn't sure we'd manage to do this year. Fingers crossed.