My daughter’s leaving gift to me was a respiratory infection that took me out for the week. Not even the kind of illness where you can at least sit and read. Barely managed to finish the London Review of Books. Just laying there with reduced blood oxygen, listening to the whistle of air in your throat and the crackling in your lungs, just hoping you pass out again soon just to relieve the boredom. I left the house today, for a whole ten minutes, for the first time since Sunday, and I’m soaked in sweat. These are the worst days for me. Not because of the illness, but because of the lost time. I decided to cheer myself up last night by watching Scotland secede from the Union, which I certainly won’t get to do again in my lifetime. My own position was, probably, a bit perverse: I love Scotland, and they deserve full self-determination, but I was also really kind of interested to see how weird things might get if they dissolved the UK. It’s that destructive side of neophilia that makes conservatives distrust people like me. I have to confront the possibility that I was into it for disruption for disruption’s sake.
But, if you compare that to the Scots being shown that their fate is still tied to a triumvirate of pasty weak-jawed middle-aged manchildren in Westminster representing three parties who are essentially the same and who are all existing in a state of political discredit, none of whom can show an individual electoral mandate… losing a week to being unable to breathe is going to look pretty good next to losing a generation to being unable to move.