Friday, 8th May 2015

I'm sick of the rioting and the lack of water and the blackout. It's been one week - seven long days - one hundred and sixty-eight agonising hours - since the lights went out, and yesterday afternoon we had to go outside as none of us had had a drop of water in over thirty-six hours. We went out at about four p.m. on Thursday amongst the looters - they're probably everywhere by now; I'm reminded of that old Smiths song from 1986: "Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham ... "

There was supposed to be a general election yesterday - a chance to decide which party will be in power from now until 2020: the Conservatives or Labour, David Cameron or Ed Miliband - but not many people cared. I registered to vote in the middle of February, and received my polling card ten days ago, but on the actual election day people were rioting because of the food shortage; at nine thirty, half an hour before the polls would have closed, I made a desperate run to the hub on <NEARBY STREET REDACTED>, but they 'didn't bother with that whole general election palaver' and never set up the polling station. I said surely they had the actual ballots; they did, but they said they were going to burn them to keep warm! I put a cross by the Labour candidate's name on five or six ballot papers, writing "<NAME REDACTED> 7 May 2015" on each one just to make sure my vote counted. I know that before 9:30 p.m. yesterday no-one had voted at that polling station - I wonder if anyone else voted at any polling station in the country - imagine that, the turnout at the 2015 general election being only 400 out of 45,000,000. Imagine if, as I write at two o'clock on this Friday afternoon, technically the Labour party were in power and Ed Miliband were technically the Prime Minister but no-one cared because today is basically the eighth day of the apocalypse.