Carthartic Conservatism

I'm writing, basically, for a little catharsis. Rather stupidly or, perhaps, incredibly sensibly, I've inducted myself into the whole essay game a little earlier than usual. All this has served to do so far though, is to bring the stress and obsession forward by a month or so, too. I understand the theoretical benefits but I still don't believe I'll be finished any earlier. In fact, I'm worried there is an even greater danger of going off the boil, talking about anything and everything vaguely literary and missing the point completely*. I'm overladen with books, the maximum loan from two libraries, along with a vast selection from my own bulging shelves but I really don't know if I'm making any headway...

Worried that life was taking a turn toward the unmitigatingly cerebral, tomorrow I'm off to meet somebody or other from the local Conservative association to try and get aboard the whole Euro election train. It should be a little safer now, things have changed since 2005 after all; then again, I'm not really one of these new-fangled 'Red Tories' who I've been reading about (mainly here at this fabulous Fabian Society blog: http://www.nextleft.org/2009/03/progressive-conservatism-or-democratic.html) nor am I any more of a Thatcherite than I used to be. In all honesty, I'm one of your dyed-in-the-wool cynical pragmatists and would be, to all extents and purposes, apolitical were it not for my armchair interest in politics (contradictory I know but most of my basic intellectual framework relies heavily on an extreme form of Orwellian Doublethink). The Conservative Party has never been actively hostile toward me however, and, in some ways, has been overly nice and so it's for this reason- along with my basically reactionary disposition- that I like to think I feel a basic loyalty to the Tories that goes beyond the average man's ill-informed, Sun-reading false consciousness. Whatever the reason, the essays aren't making it any easier for me to be prepared to meet this new and potentially important Conservative contact tomorrow, on the way toward getting bitten** and shouted at in honour of an election for a supra-national parliament that nobody really takes much of an interest in anyway.

Ho hum.

*Which has been the story of my experience of the whole course so far, actually

** By dogs... hopefully!