Category: ooh! i have a pretty navel

Through my life, I have always been somewhere on the radical left end of the political spectrum, with the exception of a small rebellious phase in my early twenties of being a Liberal Democrat. My parents were broadly left-wing, drifting right with age, following the trajectory of the Labour Party, though I strongly credit them for shaping my opinions and my world view.

One of my earliest memories is a ballet lesson. I was four or five, and anybody worth knowing was utterly furious with Thatcher. I stood in a cold community centre in a purple leotard, awkwardly failing at forming second position in a graceful manner. The activity changed; we were to extend our right arm and right leg into points, and artfully tell off an imaginary naughty dog.

Charmlessly, I assumed the pose. The pointing and stamping reminded me of something that my parents did and I had learned.

‘In my house, we say this’ I declared. I enthusiastically performed the pose. ‘MAGGIE MAGGIE MAGGIE! OUT OUT OUT!’ I chanted. My voice echoed through the hall. No megaphone was required.

I didn’t go back to ballet lessons after that.

I remember, vividly, the day Thatcher finally left. I was allowed to stay up late as a treat.

I didn’t like the new man who took over. He was grey and boring, and I didn’t trust his face. He was just as bad as Maggie, I thought. He hated me as much as Maggie hated me.

I knew Maggie hated me because I had to bring milk money into school, even though I didn’t like milk.

I knew John Major hated me because he didn’t want me to learn at school. I marched with my mum and the NUT for education.

The idea of protests captured my imagination. When we moved house, I played with the estate agent’s SOLD sign, pretending it was a placard. It hardly compared to the real thing, with all the whistles and the shouting, but it was better than nothing.

It was around the age of seven that I undertook my first direct action. The aim of the action is lost to the ages, but the process remains clear as day.

I locked myself in the one bathroom in the house, with a pile of books and some biscuits. With full bladders and an unwillingness to unscrew the hinges from the door of the one bathroom of the house, the demands of my occupation were swiftly met.

I discovered my own power that day, so marvellously effective was my simple act.

The year after that, we got a downstairs toilet and I had to occasionally concede to the whims of others.

I took a break from direct action after that, until I was fourteen and my best friend and I decided to protest against being forced to play football in PE by sitting in the goal. We agitated, and the other chubby, unpopular kids joined our improvised blockade.

Seven was a crucial year for me. As well as developing a taste for direct action, I became an atheist and a pacifist.

The atheism happened as I stopped believing in Santa and the Tooth Fairy. Santa, I realised, had my dad’s handwriting and kept my presents in my parents’ room. The Tooth Fairy had my mum’s handwriting and looked a lot like my mum when she strolled into my room and put 20p under the pillow. That, in conjuction with my mum showing me a jar of my baby teeth, led me to the obvious conclusion that neither of these characters actually existed.

It became immediately clear to me that God, too, must be one of those harmless white lies and fairy tales. At least Santa left presents and ate the mince pie we left for him.

It was my love of Fungus the Bogeyman that led in a roundabout way to becoming vehemently anti-war. One day I spied on the bookshelves a graphic novel by the same author. As a bookish child, I fell upon it hungrily.

To parents, here is a tip: never leave a copy of When The Wind Blows within reach of children. It will permanently fuck them up.

From that day on, I slept under my duvet in a vain attempt to keep the inevitable nuclear fallout away from me. I made sure that the curtains were fully drawn so I would not die a slow radioactive death.

We were moments away from nuclear catastrophe, I believed. Why was nobody doing anything about it?

The answer was, of course, that it was 1993 and the Cold War was over. I did not learn we were no longer under perpetual threat of mutually assured destruction until I was about ten.

I still feel uncomfortable if I sleep in a room where the curtains are open a crack.

These experiences, these little slices of life moulded me. Each time, I drew my own conclusions from what was available. It was a love of learning and synthesis that made me myself. I have, of course, adjusted my belief system with age, but I savour developing my own convictions. It is fluid. It started as far back as I remember.

Sometimes my brain tries to kill me.

It sounds melodramatic, but this is precisely how epilepsy works. It explodes in an electrical storm, and I might die.

Sometimes my brain doesn’t bother with the killing, instead choosing to give me a powerful, reality-bending experience which I am told many pay money to induce.

There are times when I am overwhelmed by a delicious tug of deja vu. It is not nostalgia; nostalgia denotes a painful yearning. For me, it is like a hazy feeling that I had been to this place before in an endless childhood summer; bright sunshine and the smell of cut grass mingle with offices and faceless hotel rooms.

There are times when time distorts itself, and I am falling calmly. A big, shit-eating grin crosses my face.

There are times when I feel entirely at one with nature. I can feel every atom in my body connected with every atom in the universe; I am a child of the stars, made of grass, fleetingly conscious. I am but a small part of something unimaginably huge. I see the fabric of reality and how I am woven in.

Then there are times it intensifies. I hear a sound; a high-pitched squeal, electronic angels singing. A peace descends, a lull before a storm. I know what will happen, I do not care. A big, shit-eating grin crosses my face.

My amygdala joins the party. The peace is replaced by fear, and my chest tightens.

Then there is nothing until I wake up somewhere else, tongue bitten to ribbons. I know that my brain has tried to kill me once again.

It has failed again.

Usually by this point I do not feel much; often I have been pumped full of diazepam which steals emotion.

It has been almost a year since my brain tried to kill me. I am sure it will again. For now, though, I embrace the spkes of altered reality. They are as much a part of me as all of my brain that works.

I voted in the AV referendum. I voted YES, a tiny little cross, a mote of dust in the spokes of the titanic opposition campaign, ultimately meaning nothing.

How I voted is almost immaterial. I do not care particularly for AV; it represents, perhaps, a minor improvement on the current system. NO will almost certainly win.

The thing is, I really love voting.

My first election was a London Mayoral one. As a contrarian teenager, I voted for George Galloway because everyone seemed to think he was a cunt. How I voted was almost irrelevant. Ever since I was a child I had wanted to vote.

It started with Mary Poppins. The mother of the children is a Suffragette. I remember watching, and my mother explained to me the story of those brave women who campaigned, took direct action and died so that women could vote.

That summer, my mother took me to the polling station, and I watched her vote for Vincent Cable. How she voted was irrelevant.

I loved the smell and the ritual of the polling station. I still do.

I feel a prickle of excitement when my polling card arrives. I read it, and research the candidates I will be voting for. Often, I choose wrong. I participate, nonetheless.

My polling station is a church. As I prepare to enter, a flash of concern that I may start fizzing and be labelled a witch always passes through my head. It has never happened so far.

My polling station is always empty. Today was an exception; as I entered, someone was leaving. The person who handed me my ballot paper told me it was a better turn out than usual.

As I grip the pencil, I read my ballot paper one more time, to make sure I am voting for what I had decided. Today, I read the question several times, just to be sure the government had not decided to change the question so I would be voting yes to the status quo.

The process takes less than two minutes, and yet it feels so big to me. I feel the powerful sense of history, of solidarity with my Suffragette foremothers.

Inhabiting the system that we do, voting is the only expression of opinion we are granted by the state which will certainly not result in arrest or a beating from the police. This is wrong, of course, but I feel the meaning and the history of my action so strongly that for those two minutes in the polling station I do not think of how fucked we are.

I wish my vote meant more in terms of change. The perceived significance of the act is so much larger than its actual significance.

Knowing all of this, I vote anyway. It is irrelevant, but it feels glorious.