Citizenship

I've had a weird day. Firstly, new default icon because Doctor/Rose = OTP. Yay for notasexual!Doctor and blatant chemistry.

So, I ambled into school this morning about half an hour late, walked into General Studies all ready to apologise profusely when it turned out I was the only one there. Mrs Hart (geography teacher hellbent on world domination) appeared five minutes later and made me carry piles of textbooks to the atrium for the poor children in Kenya, or something.

Yes. And at break, I was wondering what to do with myself (the library was closed today because they were using it for the visitors who may or may not be market researchers) and Mr Evans happened to me. He wanted to call a meeting of candidates. So I went.

To elaborate: if you have, perchance, been living under a rock, you may not be aware that the British General Election is on May 5th. I have been eighteen for four months, and will be able to vote for the first time ever. However, Mr Evans is holding a mock election for the school on the same day, and looks like I'm involved. One may remember that I stood in the last mock election as Democrat candidate and won through no effort of my own; if a Brussels sprout had stood, I'm sure it would have won easily and by the same hysterically enormous margin as I did.

This time, Mr Evans persuaded me to take part in the Labour candidate selection process. Much to my own surprise and chagrin, I won, and am now the official candidate. I have to make an official sort of speech and submit to Question Time before May (he says it will be good practice for the future, damn him) but today was merely preparation. Actually, today was listening to the head's insane dictums about what we can or cannot do. She says we can't be too partisan. I asked, not unreasonably, how exactly one conducts an election without being partisan.

Basically, she wants us to ensure people don't vote Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, etc.; she wants them to vote for the candidates instead. I know intellectually that I have a chance of winning this on my own merits, but none at all as Labour candidate, but still, fuck. Also, she says I can't be too professional. The posters and suchlike are to look decidedly amateur for fear of indoctrinating the first-years. Looks like the one thing I can do is employ a staff (maybe press-gang is a better term than employ) and I have two people, Anjali and Sze-kie, and obviously quackaquacka and eternalwings, who have absolutely no choice in the matter as the library is going to be my centre of operations.

Anyway. After lunch, I crept outside and after several minutes' indecision, slipped across the road to the door with the massive Vote Labour posters, and after another minute of standing there, pushed my head around the door. Everyone in the room turned around. "Who are you?"

I explained.

And then the woman closest to the door bounced across and exclaimed, "What can I do for you?" and I suddenly realised why she looked familiar. It would appear I had inadvertently met the very best person for my purposes - my MP, Claire Curtis-Thomas. She is the Labour MP for Crosby and Formby, has never rebelled on anything and has the highest expense account in the country, blah, blah, but I may end up voting for her and anyway, she couldn't have been more helpful. I have a package of posters, rosettes and stickers, and even if I do lose spectacularly I'll do it with style. I'm going to ask Sam to doctor the posters and make them look crappy.

I walked down to Blundellsands feeling like a citizen of a democracy - I've never even thought about going to see my MP before - and went to see Jane. She's here for Easter and going to see her seemed like a much better idea than going to lessons. Besides, Rice-Oxley is either on DofE or geography field-tripping again. So, Jane and I spent a thoroughly amusing hour giggling about nothing in particular, and she came into Liverpool with me. We spent the whole of the train journey giggling some more and comparing notes on the Ninth Doctor. It was fun.

I wanted to give Hannah a surprise by appearing to help her dress-shopping for the ball (I want her to go in the suit, myself; she's afraid she can't wear a suit and take a girl as her date without looking incredibly butch) but I could only stay for a short while, enough to see no dresses at all. Sadly, I had to go, leaving Jane to cope with the dress-shopping and Hannah in a slight state of wibble; it's going to be a good long while before we see each other next and it's sucky all round.

I had to leave early because my parents and I had to go the airport this afternoon to pick up some relatives. As Hannah said, "You have so many relatives!" - well, these are the ones from San Francisco and I am really rather fond of. Their names are Chintu and Shachi and I was at their wedding in Delhi five years ago; they're here for a while and I'm enjoying it. Chintu is the only living proof that I am not adopted, because despite being very distantly related to me (second cousin, I think) we share several things in common, including being the only night-owls in a family of larks, both loathing raw tomatoes but liking cooked ones, and most importantly, being geeks. He's a lifelong Trekkie, loves Frasier, wanted to know if I'd liked Atlantis or the new Battlestar Galactica, can't wait for July 16th, and above and beyond that, has a tendency to say things at the exact moment that I say them. (Tonight, I was talking about UCAS and then we both said, with the exact same inflection, "It's the principle of the thing.") I haven't seen him since his wedding and I hadn't seen him in the five years before that, so I'm thoroughly enjoying myself.

Also, he loves the Hitch Hiker's Guide but has never heard of Doctor Who. I'm looking forward to tomorrow night.