Dummies

I did nothing much apart from go into Easterby with Lee to trek around second-hand clothes shops in the heat. The only evidence of flood damage we saw was in a shoe shop down Harris Street, where workmen hammered and banged, the carpets ripped up. Lee bought some pointed suede shoes.

To say I’m in the middle of exams I feel nothing. I regard them as as good as over already.

Today it's two years up for my journal and although I want to try for some sort of say-it-all grandiloquent phrase to sum it up I can’t manage it. But I do feel proud of the fact I’ve been so conscientious in keeping it going.

On TV I watched the mouthings of Reagan on his visit to Britain and I was suddenly filled with trembling anger. Britain and the USA, the twin cockpits of democracy, all those stuffed smug dummies seated in Parliament, Thatcher herself, hawkish, condescending. . . . I want to say something. . . . As if ordinary people have any say in what goes on! Instead we are manipulated and pushed about as effectively (but more subtly) as if a dictator ruled us. Because our system decrees that Parliament is democracy, tens of thousands of people have their wished ignored. It's crap! All over the world, governments are wielding the big stick.

Dad and I got into teatime arguments over the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.