The dark clouds obscured the twilight. Rain was falling steadily, large drops bounced off the hood of my olive green jacket. I accidentally cut my finger: it didn’t hurt, but it was one of those irritating lacerations that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I covered it with my thumb as I grasped my stack of leaflets tightly. My colleague and I continued our steady pace up the street: folding the unbloodied leaflets, approaching the door, stuffing the newsletter through the letterbox.

My colleagues and I have been doing this since the selection meeting in January: gathering after work on evenings and weekends, grabbing a clipboard and leaflets, saying “Let’s go”, and then knocking on doors or dropping newsletters off. Some of these occasions are blessed by the sun and warmth: one afternoon, the breeze was gentle, the street was bathed in golden light, the sky was a sharp, crisp blue. A young lady who was unloading shopping from her minivan asked us to convince her to vote for us. By the end of the discussion, she gave each member of the team a hug. The hawthorn was in bloom and the birds were singing.

Some of these afternoons have been dark and cold; ferocious winds blew us down the street, the rain saturated the upper layer of the leaflet stacks.  Sometimes there’s the cool indifference of the apathetic: “no, I don’t vote, they’re all the same”. Sometimes this apathy is militant: “I don’t believe in voting.”

But we put on our jackets and trainers and meet again, collect our materials, take a deep breath and say “Let’s go”. Yes, some may not believe in the process, but the process exists nonetheless: surely it’s wiser to take part in it? After all, even the apathetic pay for government. Perhaps meeting us and talking will crack that particular ice: in many instances, I have heard residents say they haven’t met a representative of local government in over five years.

Again, take a deep breath and say “let’s go”. Each conversation is a job interview: yes, you may not agree with Jeremy Corbyn on everything. However, this election is about who you think will most effectively represent you at the local level, to get the traffic sorted, the schools improved, the litter cleared and the police more visible. If we’re elected, this is just the start of a change: we want to be effective representatives, to govern well, to be your voice. We will work hard to be worthy of your trust. We will work hard to make this city a fairer, better place to live. Sometimes hugs accrue in response, sometimes a smile and a nod, sometimes the door is shut. But we meet again and carry on, the team revisiting every inch of the ward which we know so well: from the community centre which was converted out of a former farm, to the large supermarket bustling with Sunday shoppers, to the new build homes living in the shadow of a Victorian water tower. We know the grand homes that circle the main park in a crescent, the flats with the beige letterboxes, the modest terraces on tree lined avenues. We’ve traded hellos with the fellows stuffing kebab shop menus after us and chatted with elderly residents in their homes and spoken with the young mums pushing baby carriages. We’ve talked about everything from antisocial behaviour to zebra crossings, recorded the concerns, thought about what we can do if we’re successful. Afterwards, there’s mugs of tea and perhaps if we’re a bit indulgent, chocolate digestives to go along with them.

We’re a little under one month out: whenever possible, we get together and keep going. Take a deep breath and proceed up the next street. This city is our home and we want to make it even better: how can we help? What can we do to make government, that often unseen, yet powerful influence, be more useful and efficient? The rain may come, the winds may blow, but we’re still out there: jackets on, red rosettes affixed, next time with bandages at the ready tucked into the bottom of trouser pockets. If we’re successful, it will not stop there. The leaves will eventually turn colour and fall, intermittent snow may drop from leaden skies after homes are decked out for Christmas but we’ll still be out on those streets: democracy after all doesn’t finish after voting, rather, it continues via the representatives listening, learning, relaying.

Get together, for “by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone”, and keep going. My red trainers will probably need to be replaced soon and holes are showing up in my jumper. Cuts quickly heal and fortunately being in the rain and cold seems to have boosted my immune system. Despite the vigour I feel, I’ve been asked why I’m doing this, usually when I’ve ended up particularly rain-sodden or windswept: after all, I’m devoting what little was left of my free time to this endeavour, and if I’m successful, I will be giving up even more. My reasons are straightforward: if we don’t take part in democracy, it dies. Indeed, we’re seeing signs of terrible rot in the pervasive inequality as exemplified by the Panama Papers: if we don’t apply the corrective of our votes, a two tier society will only take firmer root.  Certainly, winning a local election won’t solve the problem by itself, but it can be a first step. While perfect might not be achievable, better certainly is. Things can be run more efficiently, effectively and fairly.  In that hope, I’ll keep meeting with my colleagues, we’ll proceed down the ward’s streets, talking, stuffing leaflets, communicating, connecting. There will be more mugs of tea. Then we’ll plan for tomorrow.

Author’s note: recent comments by Donald Trump’s spokesperson about other politicians being “half-breeds” reminded me of how the “Death Eaters” in the Harry Potter series focused on the necessity of having “pure blood”; apparently J.K. Rowling thought the same:

Ironically, Trump’s mother was born in Scotland, hence he’s also a “half-breed”. The following story arose from ruminating on this further.

Bernie never became accustomed to the noise of the bus engine. He had rolled up a grey acrylic blanket and pressed it up against the cool window and then lay his head on it. Though his eyes were shut, he couldn’t sleep. Every time the bus accelerated, the engine revved, and the resulting vibration shook the entire vehicle.

The bus revved yet again. Bernie grimaced. He knew, in principle, how the engine worked: fossil fuel flowed into the engine, combusted, and pistons moved up and down in response. More carbon was pushed into the atmosphere and the world suffocated a little bit more.

Bernie winced. He wondered if anyone would observe him sleeping: perhaps the small flock of journalists or his staff? Certainly, there was Megan, his aide: she wore power suits and cream blouses and her auburn hair was so straight as to seem like it had been pressed with a steam iron. She seemed to be there whenever he opened his eyes, telling him about some appointment or another. With his eyes shut, he knew, he was just another old man, asleep and dreaming.

The engine revved once more. Bernie was tempted to open his eyes and look out at the scenery. However, this was western Ohio, and he knew that all he would see were endless flat horizons, a few homes, and only a few trees just beginning to be touched by autumn’s bright colours. Winds flicked at the dry stubble of harvested corn.

He sighed. In his younger days transport was so much easier. He had a Nimbus 1000 broom tucked away in his closet, next to his collection of faded white canvas sneakers. He’d open the closet, extend out his hand and the broom would rush to be grasped by him. Involuntarily, Bernie would smile. Then he’d open the window to his bedroom, breathe in the cool night air, hop on, and then fly out towards the smoky Manhattan skyline.

“If you want to lead a Muggle life, you have to live like a Muggle,” a memory whispered.

Bernie fell into sleep fully and the grey mists around the memory lifted. He could see a face framed by a long grey beard. The accent was British: English? The brown eyes twinkled. The man wore ornately woven silver grey robes that flowed to the floor.

“Yes, Professor Dumbledore,” Bernie had replied. He was seated at a wooden desk; his crimson and gold tie was loose around his neck. His wand, made of polished cedar with a hippogriff feather core, rested in front of him alongside an open Potions book. He knew that his worn and dog-eared copy of “Democracy in America” was tucked into the pocket of his brown leather satchel resting at his feet.

“You can do great things, Bernie,” the Professor continued, “special things, even things that are seen as magical…but they don’t have to be magic.”

Bernie had nodded in reply. When was this? It was a very long time ago, to be sure. It must have been his third or fourth year at Hogwarts. His memory extended further back to a day when an owl had alighted on the windowsill of his family’s apartment in Brooklyn. The window was open, the endless noise of traffic and honking horns rose from the city as did the scent of burning fuel. Golden sunlight bounced off the buttermilk coloured walls of the kitchen. Bernie had been sitting at the table that had a red and white checked cloth covering it, fishing out the last Corn Flake and the final drops of milk out of a white ceramic bowl with an oversized spoon. He’d heard the flutter of wings and turned to see where the sound had come from: the owl had light brown feathers and was clutching a parchment envelope in its beak. It blinked its big dark eyes, waiting.

“Papa,” a voice said. It was his older brother Larry. He too was finishing up his cereal: he had curly brown hair, wore a grey shirt and was pointing at the bird with his spoon.

Papa put down his copy of the New York Times: his silver wire frame glasses were perched on the end of his nose. He looked at the owl.

“Ah, it’s come,” Papa said mildly. He got up and went over to the owl and took the envelope.

“Thank you,” he said to the bird. The owl dipped its head and flew off towards Manhattan. Papa cracked the red wax seal on the letter and read it. The sunlight shone through the parchment, illuminating delicate black calligraphy.

“What’s going on, Papa?” Bernie had asked.

“It’s a letter, Bernie…you’re going to school.”

“P.S. 197?”

Papa had chuckled. “No, Bernie…not there.” Mama looked at him: her deep brown eyes were downcast.

Papa told him that he was a wizard. Mama wasn’t one, so Papa had decided to lead the “Muggle life” in Brooklyn.

“What does Muggle mean?” Bernie had asked.

“Non-magical,” Mama had interjected. There was a dissonant note in her voice; it was usually so musical.

Muggle. Bernie didn’t like the word. Surely we were all equal.

Papa told him other things. The old cherry wood wardrobe with the slightly cracked mirror and the tightly locked door in the spare bedroom was a portal to England.  Don’t worry, Bernie was told, Larry would be there to help him get settled.  A hat would be placed on his head and he’d be placed into a “house”; really with his brains he should get Ravenclaw like Larry did.  Professor Dumbledore was the best headmaster there had ever been; you’ll recognise him, he looks a bit like Rabbi Silverstein.

That September, there had been the stepping into the wardrobe with Larry, the darkness, the scent of dust and mustiness, the slight whooshing sound, and stepping out into a London morning from a broom cupboard.   Bernie was wide eyed: he looked up and saw the sun gleaming through the glass and iron roof.

“King’s Cross Station,” Larry told him. “Come on.” They ran towards a giant black and red train, hissing with steam. Kids in black robes and coloured ties, carrying huge amounts of luggage were talking with parents in strange accents. Birds were in cages. Cats meowed.

“Come on,” Larry repeated. He produced two tickets from his pocket: they were also made of parchment, stamped on in crude black letters, “Hogwarts Express”. Larry and Bernie jumped onto the train and hustled their way down the corridor; after a quick search, they found an empty compartment. The compartment smelled like an old library to Bernie, with that slight vanilla tinge of ancient books.   The other kids filed onto the train, laughing, jabbering, talking. A whistle blew. Bernie pressed his face up to the window.

“We’re about to leave,” Larry explained.

A young girl knocked on the compartment door. She seemed to be about Bernie’s age and had frizzy red hair. She wore a similar outfit to Bernie: black gown, white shirt, black necktie. Larry gestured: come in. She nodded, opened the door, shut it behind her, and sat opposite Bernie.

What big brown eyes she has, Bernie thought.

“Hi,” Bernie said.

“Hello,” she said in her strange accent, “I’m Molly. Molly Prewett. Who are you?”

“Bernie,” he replied.  “…this is my brother Larry.”

Larry gave her a small wave.

“Bernie,” she repeated. “Where are you from?”

“Brooklyn.”

“Where’s that?”

“New York. America.”

“I’ve never been to America.”

“I’ve never been to…where are we going?”

“Scotland. ”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know what house you want to get into?”

“Not really…Larry is in Ravenclaw, he’s really smart…I don’t really know much about the others.”

Molly looked down. “I’m hoping for Gryffindor.   My parents were in it.”

“Where are they?”

Molly met Bernie’s gaze. Her eyes glistened. “They couldn’t make it today.”

Bernie shifted slightly in his seat. “So what’s so good about Gryffindor?”

Larry spoke up. “It’s for the recklessly brave people.”

“Courageous, one might say,” Molly interjected.

Larry smirked.

“I don’t think I’m that brave,” Bernie said.

Molly reached across and grasped his hand; Bernie nearly jumped. “I think you could be, Bernie,” she said.

—

“Senator?”

No, don’t disturb me now, Bernie thought.

“Senator?” More insistent this time, he noted.

All right.

Bernie opened his eyes.

“Yes, Megan?” he asked.

“We’re just pulling into Dayton, sir. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“That’d be great, thank you. Black, no sugar.”

Megan proceeded gingerly down the bus to get the drink. Bernie stretched out his arms. A slight click. He could have said a charm and made all his joints supple again.

“If you want to lead a Muggle life, you have to live like a Muggle…”

Yeah. No magic. Or at least not that kind.

“Megan!” he shouted down the bus, “please get me an aspirin while you’re at it!”

—

Bernie had been to a lot of universities over the past 18 months.   They mostly fit into the same pattern: the carefully trimmed lawns, the main administration building suitably grand, often with Romanesque pillars, inspiring the standard issue awe. After the use of an Obliviate charm to wipe out his magical past, he’d gone to the University of Chicago: he was just another skinny kid with glasses, wearing blue jeans and an old sweater and carrying a dog-eared copy of “Democracy of America” in his bag. He’d become another student. Life carried on.

The bus pulled up in front of the auditorium, the brakes screeched. Bernie got up and pulled his grey wool jacket on around him. He felt the slight bump from his inside pocket against his chest. His wand was too potent to be hidden anywhere else.

“We’re here, Senator,” Megan said. Bernie nodded.

“All right, let’s do this,” Bernie said, clapping his hands together. Staffers, invariably young, bright eyed, fresh faced all looked at him and smiled. The boss was going to do this. He was going to turn the tide.

If only I was so confident, Bernie thought. It was like America wanted to drink deep of fear and anger. He took a deep breath.

“I think you could be brave, Bernie…” Little Molly’s words echoed in his memory. He didn’t believe her when she said it, but when he felt the Sorting Hat wriggle on his head, he looked directly at her. She was already sitting with the Gryffindor; it had taken all of five seconds for her to be placed there. Her eyes were bright, her lips upturned in a smile.

“Interesting,” the Sorting Hat had said, “a fine mind like your brother…hard worker…you could be brave…GRYFFINDOR!”

Molly had jumped up and clapped. Bernie smiled in reply.

—

Bernie and his staffers ascended the stairs to the auditorium. Like a plague of Cornish pixies, members of the press corps were floating around him, peppering him with questions, shoving microphones and cameras in his face.

“Senator! Senator! The latest poll puts you ten points behind! What do you have to say?”

“Is this a failed crusade, Senator?”

“What will you be telling us tonight?”

Bernie exhaled. It was one of those moments in which he wished he could fish out his wand and cast a Silencio spell. No. Dumbledore had said he could do “things that are seen as magical…but they don’t have to be magic….”

Bernie paused at the top of the stairs, and turned.

“Before I go in,” he said, “there is one thing I’d like to say.”

Be brave, Molly’s voice echoed in his memory. What had happened to her? Oh yeah, in third year, she’d fallen in love with that Arthur guy with the messy red hair. Oh well.  She’d never have walked along Brighton Beach with him, eaten a salty pretzel, nor gone to synagogue, nor married him underneath a white canopy. Ah, but that was when he truly believed. Those days were long gone.

Be brave. OK.

“The polls are not everything. They are not going to deflect us from telling the truth. The American people deserve better than fear and hatred. They deserve better than to hear that they ought to put up walls against their neighbours, that the answers to their problems lay in blaming others. We are one country, and we will keep talking about solutions for the whole country. Thank you!”

Bernie turned, pushed open the auditorium’s doors with one shove, his shoulder clicking again and he stepped inside.

—

“Really, Senator, it’s not that bad.”

Bernie was seated in a chair, a white barbershop smock tied around his neck.   A young blonde woman wearing sepia lipstick was bustling around him, applying pancake makeup.

“Megan, some looks can’t be improved,” Bernie interjected, “Get me out of here.”

“You’ll look washed out on television if you don’t do this. Pale. Sick.”

Bernie sighed. He had worked towards this moment, as unlikely as it had seemed. The other guy represented everything he’d fought against for his entire career. The other guy was more than a person, he was a series of ideas, very bad ones. Now he’d have a chance to argue against them.   Maybe, just maybe, the force of reason would prevail. Maybe, just maybe, light would banish the darkness.

Papa hadn’t understood Bernie’s career choice. “You have such a gift…” Bernie was told he could have a career as a Potions Master. He’d once tried to create a Liquefied Rainbow elixir, so he could make one shine near Molly’s doorway. Theoretically, he’d just have to place one drop on the side and it would arch in front of her as she stepped out. However, he’d misunderstood the metric measurements and created such a powerful rainbow that it shot through the glass of the classroom and illuminated the sky over Hogwarts for a good hour. “Merlin’s beard, Bernie!” the Potions Master had exclaimed; he was a flurry of brown tweed as he rushed to look out the window. Bernie had been scared, oh no, will I be expelled? But, then the rest of the students emerged into the courtyard, looked up and smiled. Despite himself, the Potions Master had smiled as well. Bernie then allowed himself to grin too.

Gone, all gone. Now there was the scent of makeup and powder, the steady hum of the air conditioning. The light of the room seemed less vivid than memory.

“You are well prepared for this, Senator.” Megan said.

True. He’d gone to the home he’d made among the green forests, tall mountains and clear lakes, not quite like Scotland, but there was an echo of that beauty. In a remote hotel, he had practiced in the dining room, which had a big blue and white sign at the back advertising pancakes with maple syrup made from local trees. He and Steve and Barry and Megan had tried to answer hard questions, and interspersed the replies with jokes. They’d talked until Bernie’s throat hurt, soothed with cups of chamomile tea and then they talked some more. The day faded into night, the dining room was illuminated with fluorescent lamps and eventually the coffee wasn’t keeping them awake. To bed, to bed, they said, and back early to argue some more. Then came the moment when they couldn’t think of anything else to say. Ready.

“I’m done,” the makeup artist said.

Bernie grinned. “Thanks for doing your best, I’m sorry that the canvas isn’t as good as the painter.”

The artist smiled. “Good luck tonight, Senator. ”

“Thank you.”

—

“There’s a lot of people out there,” Megan said, “mostly students, and we know they break in your direction.”

Bernie nodded. They were standing behind the thick blue curtain. Apart from a few flickering screens and the lights of the amplifier equipment, it was dark. The faint scent of electricity and dust was in the air. He shut his eyes, exhaled.

“When will my family be here?” Bernie asked.

“They’re due to arrive just before the debate begins, Senator,” Megan replied. “Sorry, we’ve had problems with air travel recently.”

Get a broom, Bernie thought wistfully. He nodded.

It hadn’t been easy to lead the Muggle life. Everyone has secrets, he pondered, but being able to levitate furniture and yet shifting it by hand, even when his knuckles hurt and his shoulder strained, was stretching a secret to near breaking point. He’d done it, however. The wand stayed tucked in his inside pocket. Sometimes, when he was alone, he’d take it out, admire its polished surface, feel its willingness to cast spells. He checked if he still had the necessary flick of the wrist. Always, yes.

Footsteps. Bernie detected the sound of several sets of expensive shoes pounding against the hard wooden floor.

“He’s here,” Megan said softly.

Bernie looked.   He’d never met the other guy before. He wanted to believe that there was a spark of humanity in everyone and all of us had merit and worth. If we traveled down the back alleys of individual pain and hatred, Bernie thought, we would find that the tendency to do evil stemmed from illness, a distortion of the soul, not a birthright.   Surely that had to be so.

Difficult. The other guy swaggered in: his footsteps swayed as he stepped forward, like he was an experienced gunslinger entering a saloon in an old film. His chin, jowly, was tilted upright. His grey blonde hair (was it real?) was tousled on top of his head. He was sweating slightly; the makeup artist had rendered his flesh tone a peculiar cross between orange and pink. An overwhelming blast of rich sandalwood cologne emanated from him, mixed with the scent of his wool suit.   A small American flag badge was pinned to his lapel. The brightest thing about him was his red silk tie: it was finely woven and brilliantly reflected the dim light. His small eyes glittered in the dark. Bernie thought of nocturnal predators he’d seen in nature documentaries.

“Senator,” the other guy said.

Bernie nodded. Ten points up in the latest poll and this guy knows it, he thought.

“Senator,” Megan whispered and nudged him slightly. The moderator had taken his seat at a long desk in front of the stage. The moderator, Bernie noted, was a slim, grey haired man who wore black plastic framed glasses and a dark suit.

“We’re on!” a voice whispered in the darkness.

“Welcome to the auditorium at Wright State University, here in the beautiful city of Dayton, Ohio,” the moderator said, “for the first of our Presidential debates…”

“May the best man win,” the other guy said. He smirked.

Be brave.

—

Bernie delivered his opening statement with more force than he intended. It was wrong, terribly wrong, he said, that so many people were struggling while billionaires at the top of the heap were getting an ever increasing share of the country’s wealth. His plan, he added, would redress the balance and restore the middle class, which would bring justice for hard working families.

As he spoke, Bernie thought of how many times he had said something similar. How many times had he tried to be just? Be brave. Be just. Try to make the world better. He’d lose his temper and swear sometimes. In the evenings while he was at the University of Chicago while laying on his creaking, thin dormitory bed he’d pull his wand out of his jacket and think about how he could make injustice disappear like magic.

No, he’d led a Muggle life and thus had to live like a Muggle. The wand stayed tucked away. The copy of Democracy in America became more faded and worn. A quote stuck with him, “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.” He had to keep trying. He’d march, he’d speak, he’d protest, he’d run for office. In contrast, Larry had never gotten over Hogwarts and went back to England to try and lead the Muggle life there.

Bernie could have waved his wand and made the audience believe. But that wasn’t his life. He had to use words, thoughts, reason. He finished, his throat a bit sore, with a “Thank you.”

“Thank you, Senator,” the moderator said. He nodded at the other guy.

The other guy began by talking about making America great again and Mexico paying for a wall to imprison its own citizens. It was the same nonsense as he had said so many times before. Bernie listened carefully. What made it so powerful? Why was he ten points ahead in the polls? He didn’t dare look at him at first, lest somehow the incoherent nonsense would impact his own train of thought. Rather, he peered at the audience: semi-concealed by the darkness, he could see hopeful faces, various ages and races, people in white t-shirts, tan jackets, wearing colourful jerseys.   As the other guy spoke, their expressions softened, they began to applaud the ridiculous sound bites.

What? Bernie turned to look at his opponent.

Wisps of black smoke were coming out of the other guy’s mouth as he thundered on about the iniquities of the current President, foreign policy, foreign workers. The smoke was slowly sliding across the auditorium floor and swirling around the audience. They were breathing it in.   The smoke touched the television cameras: they were unmoved. The smoke penetrated them.

Bernie looked intently at the other guy. He was still speaking, the smoke that was coming out of his mouth was becoming more intense. Wait a minute.

Bernie reached into his inside pocket, grabbed the wand, flicked his wrist, and shouted “Tempus!”

The audience froze. The other guy stopped speaking. The quiet was deafening; even the air conditioner had halted due to the spell.

The other guy smirked. “I wondered when you’d figure it out,” he said.

“You!” Bernie said. “Who are you, really?”

“Oh come on, Bernie, think back. You’ve seen me before.”

Bernie studied his face. Yes, subtract the years off, go back to a day when the blonde hair was authentic rather than plastered on, the same arrogant air: yes, he had seen him.

Bernie remembered during his fifth year when a group of new students were brought in before the Sorting Hat. One blonde boy was actively punching the brown haired boy next to him in the arm. “You’ll never be anything, Longbottom!” he’d shouted in a New York accent, “you’re a loser!” Dumbledore stared at him fiercely over the top of his glasses.

“Donald!” Dumbledore shouted, “stop that at once, you’re next!”

Donald froze, his eyes were wide. He nodded.

Professor McGonagal held up the Sorting Hat as Donald slowly took his place on the dais. The hat took one look at Donald: “You don’t need to put me on his head, Professor: SLYTHERIN!”

—

“Now you remember,” Donald said.

“Yes, I do,” Bernie replied. He held his wand at the ready. It was warm, prepared for combat. “You chose to lead a Muggle life but use your magic. That’s cheating.”

“It’d be stupid just to sit on all that power.”

“That’s why you were allowed to go bankrupt four times and you didn’t lose your fortune,” Bernie added, “that explains why you’ve had so many people eating out of your hands. That’s how come you’re ten points ahead when all you’re saying is garbage.  That’s how come you got so much adoration despite being so damn terrible.”

Donald grinned. “Terrible? I’m the best. And I learned from the best.”

Donald rolled up his sleeve, undoing the gold and diamond cufflink that secured his white Egyptian cotton shirt.   There was a tattoo of a black skull with a snake as a tongue.

The Dark Mark! Bernie thought.

“Voldemort is dead!” Bernie shouted.

“Oh Bernie, he may be dead, but his ideas live on…and I’m going to fulfil his vision of Muggles serving magic. Accio, wand!”

A black wand flew out of the darkness into Donald’s hand. He touched the tip of it to his tattoo: the snakes moved on his forearm, slithering and writhing. Bernie heard the distant sound of thunder.

“This ends now, Bernie,” Donald said.

“Yes it does. Stupefy!” Energy flew out of Bernie’s wand.

Donald deflected the shot. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Expelliarmus!” A red bolt blasted forward.

Again, a deflection: the bolt slammed into the ceiling, leaving a slight scorch mark. “My turn,” Donald said, “Avada…”

“Stupefy!” The spell hit Donald from the audience, square in the chest. He fell, stunned, silent. It reminded Bernie of a tree collapsing after it had been chopped down. Donald landed on his face.

Bernie turned. Who did that?

“Hello?!?” he shouted.

Footsteps resounded out of the darkness. A figure slowly emerged into the light. His saviour wore a royal blue “Bernie 2016” cap, a denim jacket, a brightly coloured patchwork dress. A brilliant shock of frizzy red hair flowed from out under the cap onto her shoulders.

Bernie gasped. “Molly?” he asked.

She pulled off the cap. Yes, she had aged, but the hair, the smile and the eyes were the same. For a moment, he saw the little girl who sat across from him on his first train ride to Hogwarts.

“Hello, Bernie dear,” she said, her eyes twinkling, “it’s been a long time.”

—

They sat together on the stairs leading up to the platform. “You got married?” Molly asked.

“Yes, twice. Fortunately, it took the second time.”

“Grandchildren?”

“Yes! And you?”

“Me too.”

Bernie couldn’t restrain the question any longer. “How did you know to come here, Molly?”

Molly reached out and touched Bernie’s cheek. Her fingertips were cool and delicate. “I didn’t, dear. I just wanted to see how you were getting on. You’ve been so brave.”

Bernie smiled. “I’m so out of practice.”

“Never mind.”

They paused.

“What are you thinking about?” Molly asked.

“It’s funny how I’ve tried to turn my back on the past…but the past always pivots with you, you can’t get rid of it.”

“It’s for the best, dear, would you really want to forget?”

Bernie smiled and clasped Molly’s hand. “Nah.”

Molly grinned, then nodded towards Donald. He was still on the floor, face down, with his sleeve rolled up. “What should we do with him?”

“Well, we can’t let a Death Eater become President of the United States.”

“No, we can’t…my son is an Auror, should we call him? Should we get Donald sent to Azkaban?”

“No, that would create too many holes, too many questions…besides it’s his ideas that are truly dangerous.  We need to find another way.”

Molly stood. Bernie got up as well. They aligned themselves to be side by side, like the two children they once were. Together, they contemplated Donald’s still form.

“Poor, poor Donald,” Molly said.

“He’s not poor. He used magic in the Muggle world to take things that didn’t belong to him. Property, people, money.”

“He’s poor in this sense, Bernie dear, he never did anything honestly. Even his hair is a lie.” She pointed at the top of Donald’s head. “Look at that preposterous thing.”

Bernie pursed his lips.

“I have an idea,” he said.

—

Donald awoke. He was still on stage. His sleeve was intact. Had he blacked out? Had he revealed himself to Bernie? Didn’t seem like it, Bernie was still talking about his socialist, “We Are the World” crap. The audience applauded.

Must have been a dream, Donald reasoned. Have to stop drinking that stupid champagne that’s only $300 a bottle. It isn’t quality.

“Would you care to reply?” the moderator asked him.

Donald whispered to himself, Confundo. The power wouldn’t come. What?

Instead, he spoke normally. Mexicans are a damn burden, he said, sending rapists and criminals across the border. We need to keep Muslims out.  We need to make America great again. We’d win so much that we’d get bored of winning.

But the audience wasn’t responding. The women’s hearts weren’t beating faster. The power wasn’t reaching out to the television audience.

What?

—

Bernie whispered the counter spell. The audience was looking at Trump with glittering eyes. There was Molly, in the back row, her Bernie 2016 cap pulled down tight on her head again. He gave her a slight nod.

She whispered “Deprimo” and the air conditioner began to blow onto the stage with extreme force. Papers blew up from the moderator’s desk and the podiums into a storm of the printed word.

“We seem to be having a technical problem!” the moderator shouted.

The wind rose. The flagpoles positioned behind the podiums fell over. The power of the wind buffeted the set as if invisible fists were punching it.

Donald tried to crouch out of the way. There was a tearing sound: his blonde and grey wig ripped off his head and blew up against the nearest wall. It stuck; its artificial fibres were hopelessly tangled.

Bernie nodded slightly. Molly stopped. The wind ceased. Donald stood motionless on international television, now bald. The dome of his bare pink head glistened with sweat in the bright light. His eyes were wide. For a moment, Bernie saw the little boy that froze in fear before Professor Dumbledore.

Donald let out a blood curdling and incoherent yell. He ran off the stage, his heavy footsteps audible as he exited as fast as he could. Bernie took his place back at the podium. He saw Molly smiling at him in the darkness. As he gripped the podium, he thought, “this is happening…in this moment, right now, I may have become President.”

Be brave. Be just.

Bernie took a deep breath.

“Well,” the moderator said, straightening his hair and glasses. He looked at Bernie with a questioning gaze. What just happened?

Bernie tried to look reassuring: he smiled. “Well, Coop,” Bernie asked, “does that count as a forfeit?”

“I think so, Senator…thank you to you, and to the audience here in Dayton.”

The story could have had a different outcome. With an alternate set of policies and priorities, 3 year old Aylan Kurdi might have lived. He could have settled in Bedford or Peterborough, gone to school, torn holes in his navy blue jumper, gotten scrapes on his knees after falling off his bike, done well on his GCSE’s while his parents worked in a local hospital or supermarket. He could have become a doctor, lawyer or engineer. He could have paid taxes and served as a school governor.  He could have touched lives and made them better. He was full of potential. But this isn’t the world he was living in: his fate was to end up on a Turkish beach, face down, looking more asleep than dead as the cool waves of the Mediterranean washed over him.

Britain is completely absent on the issue of Syrian refugees. It would perhaps be a bit more comforting to attribute our reticence to the grey, dull machinery of a decrepit and cash-starved state which is slow to action: under those circumstances, the spark of determined leadership can put matters right relatively quickly. However, Britain is not there because the Conservative Party and specifically David Cameron do not want us to be there. Indeed, the Prime Minister is much more concerned about maintaining the good opinion of the far right of his own party and outflanking UKIP than in doing what is morally correct. Let’s be clear: the far right of the Conservative Party is so opposed to migration that they genuinely believe if these desperate refugees show up on our shores that the government’s duty, except under extraordinary circumstances, is to send them back to the hell from which they just escaped. When challenged, the Tory far right and their acolytes repeat meaningless mantras, which are subsequently parroted by the Prime Minister, that state that the best way to deal with the problem is at source. Given how Syria has shattered into a myriad of blood spattered fragments, this is a nonsensical argument. In their view, is the average Syrian and his or her relations, who merely want to get on with their lives, supposed to hide in a foxhole until the war is over? Apparently so: trouble us not, they say, we’ll send the bombers (which have no decisive effect). Meanwhile, they suggest, just endure the pain and the trauma, live in shelled out cities, dodging genuine barbarians who want to destroy culture as well as people, and with no prospect of a better life for the foreseeable future. There’s no such thing as society except in the vacuous slogans of the Prime Minister which are used to justify benefit cuts. It’s your problem.

However, the refugees are not like the poor or disabled that can be bullied by the likes of Iain Duncan Smith. As they have nothing to lose, they have even less to forfeit by ignoring the likes of Andrew Mitchell and Bill Cash, and by thoroughly disregarding the puppet strings they’ve attached to Cameron. Rather, they will take to their heels, to bicycles and barely functioning cars, and to boats braving the dangers of the cruel and open sea in order to escape. Mealy mouthed and impotent platitudes about dealing with the problem at source will not deter them: eventually, many will stand at Calais, look across the Channel, and think about how best to get to the tranquil shore of England. Cameron may think he is doing what is necessary to manage his own party and defeat UKIP: but his inaction does absolutely nothing to address the reality of the refugees nor even correctly acknowledge the problem with which Britain must contend.

But it could have been different: it’s worth noting that one European nation has shown courage and leadership: Germany. Given its history, this may seem peculiar, or perhaps it can be seen as an ultimate act of atonement. Angela Merkel is by no means some sort of soft-hearted leftie: she is a conservative, and as the Greeks discovered, a hard nosed one at that. Yet she has some sense of moral responsibility. She invoked the conscience of her nation and threw open the doors to 800,000 refugees, which constitutes 1% of Germany’s total population. This is an astonishing act of generosity: so far, objections to this policy have been relatively muted.  Individual Germans have responded by opening their doors to Syrian refugees.

Perhaps oddly in this day and age, Merkel leads, the country understands and follows. Again: where is Britain? As we are nowhere, it is no wonder that Mrs. Merkel and the other European heads of state who are directly contending with this issue are annoyed with Cameron.  It’s also not surprising that they have let the Prime Minister know that so long as his inertia continues, his wish to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the European Union will fall on deaf ears.

It could have been different: we need to accept that the choice Britain made in May was desperately poor. For the sake of argument, had we ended up with a Labour and SNP coalition government, it’s nearly impossible to see them reacting in the same way. The tug of conscience would have dragged a Prime Minister Miliband, backed by a Foreign Secretary Alex Salmond, in the direction of sense and compassion. At the very least, Yvette Cooper’s suggestion of letting in 10,000 refugees wouldn’t have fallen on deaf ears. Charities and local government would have worked together to set up reception points, distribute food, ensure sufficient help. Aylan Kurdi may have had somewhere to go and perhaps traveled in greater safety. He could have ended up in Bedford or Peterborough and his Mum and Dad could have gotten jobs and paid taxes and contributed to society. What is more, Aylan and many more like him could have had a future: Britain would not have lost out from granting the opportunity. Indeed, Britain didn’t certainly end up the poorer from extending a helping hand to many persecuted minorities in the past; perhaps the worst aspect of our current Conservative government is that they have induced us to forget ourselves.

It could have been different, but it isn’t. Aylan will probably not be the last refugee whose sad remains will be washed up onto a sun drenched Mediterranean shore which starkly contrasts the grim harvest that each rising tide will bring. David Cameron will continue to look irritated at being asked about Syrian refugees. Ill-tempered and ignorant British tabloids will stoke fears of being “swamped”. Brainless populists will speak of a country that’s too crowded, apparently to the point where there is no longer room for a touch of humanity. Germany and Sweden will look like beacons of hope and liberty in comparison to our morally bereft island. The Tories will not care: they will hope that their hard-heartedness will appeal to the darker instincts of the British public and reinforce the message that there is no such thing as society, it’s every man for himself. We will be less of a nation that can hold its head high, less of a beacon of hope, less of an avatar of liberty: it’s every man for himself and all that Britain is worth to anyone is what they get out of it. It still could be different, provided the rest of society pulled together in opposition to the state and its malignant doctrines: but it’s difficult to see how.

My black suit was clean and pressed. My white shirt with a herringbone pattern embedded into its weave had been ironed. A silk maroon tie was neatly tucked underneath my stiff collar, tied into a Windsor knot. The head of fresh red rose was pinned to my lapel. I had shaved around my beard that morning and I still felt the slight sting of the lotion I applied afterward. I was nervous, I was hopeful: it was a sunny, warm August morning and I was about to go into the offices of Unite the Union to be interviewed to be a potential Labour candidate for next year’s local election.

Becoming a candidate isn’t merely a matter of putting in an application and hoping for the best. This is just as it should be: before the party is going to expend money, time and commitment on someone, it needs to gauge the potential candidate’s willingness and ability to reciprocate the party’s efforts. In my black leather valise, I carried with me a printed copy of my CV, my application form, the novel I’ve written and the academic textbook to which I had contributed a chapter. My British passport was carefully tucked into a plastic pocket. I was fully prepared to be questioned deeply, to have my credentials checked and to be scrutinised to the core.

Every potential candidate is vetted by a panel from outside the constituency. In my case, I was questioned by three people from constituencies directly adjacent to my own. The room was dark pink in colour, the blinds had been drawn to keep out the heat, and the golden light of the day poked through via slender gaps. The relatively dim light gave the room a somewhat subdued air, which lent itself well to the seriousness of its purpose. The panel introduced themselves, hands were shaken and we began.

I was asked the basics about who I am and why I wanted to be a candidate. I spoke about the work I had done with the UCU union and my commitment to working in the community. In particular, I have served as a school governor for the past several years: my hope was and remains that I can use my knowledge, experience and skills to the benefit of the area which I’ve made my home.

Notes were taken, the panelists nodded, a few smiles appeared. We talked in detail about some of the problems of the area: parts of it, it was said, have unemployment in excess of 20 percent, and many of those who are out of work lack fundamental qualifications. How would I try to address this?

Although technically my council (Peterborough) falls into the “No Overall Control” category, it is run by the Conservatives. I said if I was elected that my first priority would be to ask the council what on earth they were doing to address these problems. Were they providing retraining schemes? While council budgets are being cut, there is a level of discretion that could be applied, furthermore, it wouldn’t be in the Conservative Party’s interests to cut off their colleagues’ prospects of regaining an overall majority. This would entail a less sharp edge to the cuts that Peterborough would likely face, in which case, how is this advantage being used to the benefit of people in the city?

Second, I would ask what was being done to partner with local businesses and third sector organisations to help these people get back into employment? The Tory propensity is for dull, unimaginative government that seems to have one policy, namely, trusting the free market and doing little else: I assume that what they are doing is quite limited.

We moved on to other topics: did I understand what the Group Whip did? Yes, I had two tools as a councillor, a voice and a vote. The voice was for my constituents, the vote was to help the party to help my constituents. I was asked what I would do if policy didn’t match with local priorities: I talked about my experience in forging agreements between groups with differing interests and the art of compromise.

The interview became fun: smiles became more prevalent, we talked about the weaknesses in the Northern Powerhouse programme and how it was actually intended to absolve central government from its responsibilities. One thought occurred to me which I then expressed: it’s time that Labour became the party of the digital economy.

The Tories have cast their lot with the financial industry: witness the hedge funds which donated to their recent campaign. They believe only in intervention when it shores up banks. Meanwhile there are many digital entrepreneurs, small businesses which pay their full share of taxes who cannot get access to capital to expand their companies; this capital is often sucked down the plughole of speculation about esoteric matters such as the weather in Iowa. I know of an inventor who needed substantial capital to be able to manufacture his advanced product in Britain: he was on the international news, his invention was hailed as a step forward. However, he simply couldn’t get the capital to build his facility in England. As a result, he was forced to turn to Chinese factories. Had he been able to do so here, no doubt there would have been highly skilled, well paid jobs that would have arisen as a result. The Tories would shrug and say that it’s just the free market at work; Labour can come up with a better, more active response.

It’s not as if Labour and the left doesn’t have a history of supporting innovation: Harold Wilson spoke of the “white heat” of the technological revolution. Tony Benn created International Computers Limited and supported the development of the Concorde. In America, Obama has shown there’s a great deal of mileage to be the candidate of technology: among the major donors to his campaign in 2012 were Microsoft and Google. This contrasted positively to Mitt Romney’s contributions from Goldman Sachs (it must be said that Goldman Sachs hedged their bets, however). In Australia, the last Labor victory was achieved in part to its support of a programme for a National Broadband Network: the government was later felled by infighting. Labour in the UK needs learn from the examples of others, reclaim its heritage, and become the party of the technological progress again.

After I finished speaking, I feared that I might have said too much: after all, the role I was putting myself forward for was to serve the community at the ground level. If I am successful, my priority will be to get school roofs fixed and streetlamps mended, to help local businesses get on their feet and people back to work, to stand up for those left vulnerable by cuts and victimised by the vicious policies coming down from central government. I was asked to leave the room while the panel discussed my interview. For those few tense minutes, nerves took hold again: after all, politics isn’t just about presenting a clear argument or having facts at your command, rather, it’s also entails ensuring that these land in a way that is interesting and compelling.

The door opened. The panel quickly put me out of my misery and told me that I had been accepted; they were kind enough to add that they thought I was “engaging” and would make a “wonderful candidate”. I thanked them profusely, told them I looked forward to the campaign,  shook hands again, and then stepped back out into the bright August sunshine.

The next stage will involve being adopted by a particular ward. But that won’t come until September: by then, the bright sunshine will start to fade into memory, the trees will begin to turn colour, and there will be many weekends spent walking up and down the sidewalks, wearing out shoe leather, speaking to voters and handing out leaflets. I hope to be the very model of a modern Labour candidate: while part of me will enjoy the languid days of August, the most exciting times are yet to come.

I was probably the last human being to see my cat Amelia alive. It was a bright August morning: the coffee maker was gurgling away as it pushed hot water through the freshly ground beans. The kitchen was imbued with the scent of banana flavoured porridge which was just out of the microwave. The sun was shining: I looked out the kitchen window and could see blossoms of magenta, white and blue in the garden, and the golden morning light blazing onto the flat land. Distant white windmills turned in the stiff breeze. It was difficult to believe that anything particularly bad could happen on such a day.

Dear Amelia sat on the windowsill, her black and white head bobbing along with my movements through the kitchen, her pale yellow-green eyes darting back and forth, trying to anticipate what I would do next. Amelia was a hunter and she didn’t care for being cooped up in the house, particularly on a morning in which the birds were singing and the grass was rustling with life.

I had a propensity to put Amelia’s looks into words. In this instance, her gaze said:

“I am such a good cat, if you let me out, I will come back, I promise!”

Hitherto, that had been the case. Certainly, she had given myself and my partner long, worrisome nights when she didn’t come back at dusk: however, usually there would be a cry outside my window at four in the morning. I would stumble down the stairs, unlock and open the door and her black and white form would power past me. Yes, she had been spending more time out as of late and a decision had been made to keep her in for several weeks: but she was restless and the summer sun was warm. So I opened the window: she leapt out and strolled across the courtyard in front of my home. She turned a corner, which indicated she was heading towards the front yard.

I never saw her again.

A full 24 hours passed and she didn’t return home. In the midst of our mutual fretting, my fiancee and I had some hope she would come back: after all, Amelia had once been a feral cat and she had recently developed a taste for the “fast food” provided by the various rodents and birds on our property. Several weeks ago, I saw her out on the lawn: she caught a field mouse and gobbled it up at speed.  It was amazing to see her in predator mode, considering how endearing and cuddly she was most of the time.

We thought perhaps she had gone on a “hunting trip”. Not too far from our home is a grove of trees which seemed ideal grounds for it: the trees are thick, old and dense. No doubt all manner of prey would be there. I thought of Amelia as a latter day Robin Hood, living off of the land in her own variant of Sherwood.

My fiancee and I went for a walk amidst the fields of sugar beet and rye. Eventually, we arrived at the grove: we called out her name repeatedly and loudly.  We got no response except the occasional bird singing, a cow mooing from a nearby field and the sound of the wind rushing through the trees. The grove itself was less idyllic close up than it was from a distance. People had dumped old furniture, including a sofa and chairs covered in torn red leather, into it. Old refrigerators and televisions were also present, as was a discarded car door. Indeed, all manner of rubbish was there, but no Amelia. We took a dangerous walk alongside an A road looking for any sign as cars and lorries zoomed passed us, whipping the air from behind us. The occasionally less than helpful driver honked their horn. I thought if Amelia had strayed anywhere near this road, she was doomed. As it so happened, we found nothing.

My fiancee then sent out Amelia’s photo to various veterinarians and a cattery in our area. Late on Saturday night, we received a response: apparently the remains of a black and white cat had been found on the A road. It was too dangerous to retrieve them at that point, but nevertheless, the vet would make every effort to pick them up in the morning. My fiancee succumbed to floods of tears; I felt a deep pain inside. What if I hadn’t let her out? Would she still be around? Was it really her?

I didn’t want to think it was her: after all, earlier on Saturday we had gone into town and our cheerful taxi driver, a man with silver wire frame glasses and grey hair, had told us that there were gangs of feral cats in the area. My disposition was instantly brightened by that thought: in my mind’s eye, I could picture Amelia encountering such a feline tribe in the undergrowth of sugar beet or rye around our home. After circling each other, I pictured her touching noses with a large ginger tom. Then they would go hunting together. I envisaged her running amidst a pack, sleeping in barns, living off her wits from that moment onward. Amelia the bold, Amelia the adventurer, I thought.

The email had punctured that hope. A restless night followed: I awoke from time to time, thinking in the darkness. What if I hadn’t let her out? Would she have escaped anyway? Was this inevitable? She had lost her fear of the road in recent days. But is anything inevitable?  The historian Dominic Lieven once said that most stupid school of history is the one that believed that what happened is what had to happen: was it just as dense to think that Amelia’s demise was preordained?

The dawn came and the vet called. Amelia had been microchipped a long time ago and it was this which confirmed her identity. To put it delicately, because of the speed at which cars had driven along the road, I was informed that we would not be able to identify Amelia via any other means. The vet tried to be reassuring: it was unlikely that she had suffered, rather, she had been taken from this life as suddenly as if she had been struck by lightning. This was scarce comfort.

Given the state of her remains, my fiancee and I quickly decided that Amelia should be cremated. I made up my mind that a small corner of the garden will be dedicated to her: her ashes will be buried beneath the roots of a white rose and a couple of other perennial plants. On top, wood chips will be scattered as a decorative feature and to prevent weeds taking root: smooth stones will be placed around the perimeter. Solar powered lights will be placed at either end of the memorial. As I write this, the plants are in pots; they have been watered and nurtured for their eventual destination. Next Tuesday, dear Amelia’s remains will arrive home and the plan will be implemented. The rose will hopefully bloom before the autumn frost, thus beginning her new life, one which will hopefully last for many, many years.

I will never forget.  Amelia was my first cat. I remember when she and I were introduced: she was nervous, she had issues with her spine, she didn’t quite saunter so much as wiggle. She inspired me: when she would roll around on the bed as if she couldn’t get comfortable, I thought she was saying that it was her “pyjamas, they’re too big“. And when she went out, it was to do her “little cat errands, including looking around, collecting leaves and chasing frogs“. She was hesitant, pretty, funny.  If I put food down for her and then made the slightest noise or disruption, she’d run away from the bowl, no matter how hungry she was.  She was also extremely affectionate: there were many occasions when I’d lay on my back, she would climb up on my chest and rub her head up against my hand.

We bonded in other, more unusual ways. One time when she was ill, my fiancee and I decided to take Amelia to a holiday caravan in Cumbria for a few days. We rolled up a big fluffy duvet on the front passenger seat (I imagined Amelia saying “Everybody talks about the Cloud, I have one“) as she couldn’t stand to sit inside a kitty carrier, and she sat there for the entire 90 mile trip. In order to keep her calm, I narrated the journey to her in a soft voice. She eventually fell asleep.

Every morning, she waited for me: she and her fellow cats, Thomas and Sarah Jane, would look up with me with big eyes the moment I opened mine. I’d stretch, groan, put my feet on the floor and put on my robe, and we would all go down, more or less in company, to the kitchen where tins were opened and chicken and liver were put into ceramic bowls.

My other cats are shell-shocked. Not long after Amelia’s disappearance, Sarah Jane tried to tell me something: when I came home one evening, she came right up to my car door, let out a cry and tried to lead me somewhere. But the place she was leading me to was nowhere in wide circles. She’s extremely clever: via these circles, I eventually realised, she was trying to indicate Amelia’s absence. Similarly, Thomas has been very reluctant to set foot outside the house.

They will recover in time, as will my partner and I. I will look at old photos of Amelia on occasion and remember her lying on her back showing off her furry belly and waving her paws at me. I will look out onto the garden at night, see the solar powered lights shimmering in the darkness and remember how she made my life brighter. Some might say that Amelia was “only a cat”; those people probably have never had a pet in their lives, nor experienced the unconditional love that one can bring. Amelia’s passing is a death in the family; I only hope that there is a great beyond in which she has opened her eyes onto a fresh morning, past all care and pain, and she can play in the light forever.

Democracy, contrary to what some may think, is not just about mentions in the press, appearances on television or cleverly contrived advertising campaigns. Often, its processes take place in humble locations among relatively small groups of people: just so, otherwise supposedly representative government would become solely a product of the media, who would spoon feed us their perspective along with whatever messages were being conveyed.  It can be argued that one of the reasons why the Tories won the 2015 General Election is precisely because too much of politics was conducted on the minefields the media constructed.

Last Friday, I joined a substantial group of Labour supporters and activists at a suburban venue for the leadership hustings. The walls of the crowded room in which the event was held were adorned in a shade of buttermilk yellow, and there was a folding table at the back which was set up for a raffle. A fire door was propped open for ventilation purposes and so that those dependent on nicotine could easily slip out for a smoke. Representatives from all the leadership contenders, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall sat at a table at the front: it seemed very distant from the gilded halls of Westminster, but all the better for that. Although I had made up my mind, I was interested in what they had to say in support of their chosen candidates. Furthermore, I wondered if I would get a sense of who was making an impact and who wasn’t.

The representatives were all fairly animated about their chosen candidates. I can’t say that the audience overtly bubbled with enthusiasm: the closest that we got to a slight simmer was in response to some of Corbyn’s policy positions. There was time for questions from the audience, and I asked the following:

“Being Labour leader is not just a policy job….the party is one of the most complex and diverse organisations in Britain, and being Labour leader is preparation for managing one of the most complex and difficult organisations in the world. What skills and experience does your candidate bring to the job to deal with this challenge?”

Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP since 1983, but has no experience in management; his representative hedged by saying that he would introduce more democracy into the party. Fine, but performance reviews and decisions on allocating resources can’t always be put to a vote: people management and organisational capacity will be required. Liz Kendall’s representative emphasised his candidate’s lack in this regard by suggesting that experience was overrated. Andy Burnham’s advocate briefly mentioned his experience in government before submerging into rhetoric about leadership; this was probably wise given that it was on Burnham’s watch that a disastrous Private Finance Initiative was set in place for my area’s main hospital. Yvette Cooper’s ally hit the target by saying she had run an £8 billion department and then proceeded to list her management credentials.

After the hustings concluded, I was left in no doubt that if Labour members voted with their hearts that Corbyn would be their choice. His appeal is definitely emotive: his advocate appeared to suggest that if only we could somehow be ideologically pure, that this would attract millions of votes from those who felt that they no longer had an ally in the Labour Party. This position was presented as something akin to cosmic truth, despite the fact that post-industrial Britain may not contain those voters any longer; indeed, an approach for the digital age may make much more sense than continuing to wish for the world of 1945.

If Labour supporters voted with their heads, Yvette Cooper would be their pick. At the hustings, heart won over head by a fair margin: I am pleased, however, to have voted with my head. Perhaps oddly, voting with my head also did my heart good.

Though I disagreed with the outcome, it was an illuminating evening: the issues had been ventilated, and the qualities of the candidates were laid out for the membership to mull over. Should such an event be repeated throughout the country, and I believe that is the intention, whatever choice that is made will be an informed decision: it would be tough for a Labour Party member to say that they were walking into this election blind unless they were doing so on purpose.

It was also brilliant for another reason: a recently elected councillor had a word with me as I was going in. He asked if I would be interested for standing for a council seat. As it turns out, there is will be a special election next year, and all 3 seats in his ward are up for grabs: he was hoping I could be persuaded to join him in contesting one of them.

At first, I was startled. After all, I have only lived in Cambridgeshire since the end of May; however, I had noticed that many of the issues that existed in Bradford, in particular the problems of housing, education and poverty were solely not confined to Yorkshire. Sadly, deprivation is on the march throughout Britain, and it has blighted many communities that the Tories would rather hide behind the veneer of a supposedly burgeoning GDP and enhanced employment statistics. If the Labour Party exists for anything in particular, it should be to stand for the truth about the real state of Britain. Yes, the wealthy are more dazzlingly well off than ever before. Yet Ofsted reports from some of the schools in Cambridgeshire are far more dross than glitter: battered by a new curriculum and starved of resources, they are finding they cannot do more with less in the face of increased expectations. The education these children receive is also not necessarily preparing them for careers which would improve their immediate prospects. Rather, many are doomed to be eventually stuck in menial roles in call centres and supermarkets, not able to take full advantage of the resources of intellect and imagination that nature granted to them and achieve a more prosperous and fulfilled life.

Another hard truth: the life of the poor is slowly degenerating into the Hobbesian mantra of “nasty, brutish and short”. Being on the dole is seen more as a crime than a misfortune: Victorian rhetoric about “self-help” and regarding poverty as some sort of moral failing has made a comeback albeit via the medium of so-called “reality television”. This dogma in its first incarnation did little to improve the lives of those subsisting on uncertain wages and living in slums. Surely the Labour Party needs to expose this truth as well, using the life experiences of people like Harry Leslie Smith to make it clear as to where the Tories are taking us.

Another truth is that none of what ails Britain is going to be fixed by merely trusting the market. The Tories haven’t got an alternative. The unfettered free market, red in tooth in claw, was tried in the 19th century and it not only led to a staggering gap between the rich and poor, but periodic economic depressions which made poverty even more fearful and desperate. There has to be a counterbalance, a leveler: it should be an energetic and forward-looking state which intervenes to ensure that no part of society is left behind as the market does its work.

All the leadership candidates, in one way or another, stand for this: Andy Burnham embraced Harry Leslie Smith at the last party conference, Yvette Cooper is particularly strong on Scandinavian style policies for families, Jeremy Corbyn offers a socialist prospectus, even Liz Kendall, supposedly the most right wing of the lot, doesn’t want trade unions to be weakened further. However, when we finally pick a leader, that individual won’t be able to change the party’s prospects by themselves: rather, it will be incumbent upon every activist and supporter to take a stand too. It will also mean standing for local government seats, even if at first the prospect seems startling.

I spent the better part of the weekend filling out the required form, which can be daunting if your mind is plagued with a quote from Erasmus: “Prepare therefore to be entertained with a panegyric…on myself, that is, upon Folly.”  Nevertheless, I have detailed my experience and interest in the role. People I respect have reviewed it and pronounced it more than sufficient: I’m in the editing phase where I leave it aside for a brief time.  I will look at it once more and submit it. On Thursday there’s a “taster session” at the town hall: I’ve not been there before, but in my mind’s eye I see an impressive 19th century monument to civic pride, the outside adorned with stout columns and red brick, with a semicircle of oak desks arranged at its heart. If I work assiduously, get nominated and then elected, perhaps one day I will return there to sit at one of those desks. If so, I will take a deep breath, put all my heart, mind and soul into the effort and take a stand.

East Anglia’s summer is at its height. The flat land doesn’t readily retain its temperature, so the evenings are generally cool: the moment the sun tucks in over the horizon, the heat left over from the day rises up from the lawn and the fields full of growing sugar beets. An open window lets in fresh breezes and the sounds of cars traversing a nearby country road. In contrast, when morning approaches, summer’s intensity strikes quickly; the first rays of dawn appear not long after 4:30 AM. Occasionally, my cat Amelia will cry out to me at that time: having spent a night out hunting, she wants to get back into the house before the sun rises. I open a window on the ground floor: immediately I see a black and white blur zip past me and she lands on the carpet with a soft thud. Amelia then looks up at me with her yellow green eyes and drops a dead mouse near my feet. I tell her thank you and get the garden shovel to perform another impromptu burial near the rose bushes.

As I consume a cup of coffee and a bowl of banana flavoured porridge, the sun fully shows itself. The golden light which first tenderly touched the horizon and then crept over the garden turns more intense. The skies are a pure blue. The heat which was warming after a chilly night becomes uncomfortable. Indeed, by the time noon approaches, it feels rather as if the sun is a hammer and the ground is an anvil, being made yet more straight, more flat by the relentless pounding.

When the evening comes again, it’s time to get out the hose and water the hanging baskets full of bright peonies, daisies and lobelia, and ensure the vegetable plants in the greenhouse have all they need. Once watered, the somewhat metallic scent of chlorophyll and compost combined fills the greenhouse: life is fecund and burgeoning.

I have no neighbours living nearby. Life on the farm is just my fiancee, our cats and me: the postman brings letters and packages, but apart from this, our isolation seems to be more or less complete, with one exception. A black metal satellite dish is perched on the corner of my home, pointing towards the clear skies; it pulls down all the news from distant lands. Isolated as we may be, as peaceful as these days spent amidst the clover and dahlias have been, it’s impossible to escape the impression that this is mainly a time of chaos.

The attack in Tunisia was particularly chilling. A little over one year ago, my fiancee and I stayed in precisely the same hotel where the terrorists struck. We walked along the same beach, ate in the same restaurants, ordered coffee on the same terraces. I feel badly for the victims; I also feel tremendous sympathy for the staff who looked after us. They were friendly and hospitable: they were helpful with every request, made sure we were never thirsty or hungry.  We had good meals there served with an excellent Tunisian red wine. We took a day out to linger in the hotel spa: we spent several hours floating in a salt water pool. From that vantage point, we could see the beach and the azure waters of the Mediterranean.

When we got bored of the hotel, we went into the town of Sousse. I was tickled by the prominent sign advertising the offices of the Tunisian Workers Party, complete with hammer and sickle; it showed that Communism, so discredited elsewhere, had found new life in a democracy which had yet to reject it. We walked along Sousse’s narrow streets: every shopkeeper we encountered claimed to have a relative in Sheffield. One trader put a hat and scarf on my head before I could say anything; we gently rebuffed him. Sales techniques aside, we spent a pleasant afternoon drinking coffee and watching the bustling town getting on with life; we had no sense that Sousse was on the verge of chaos. On the contrary, little touches like the pharmacy with glass counters and a green neon sign and the plentiful red billboards urging people to buy mobile phones suggested that it was moving ahead. The prominence of the French language on signs gave the country a truly European feel; it was possible to believe that after a time and more hard work that Tunisia would achieve a European standard of living.

However, there were also scenes that were more troublesome: we happened across a bus station behind the open air market. Calling it a proper bus station is probably giving it too much dignity: it was a series of cracked concrete islands marked with blue and white signs. Ordinary people waited to board ancient buses. The vehicles threw up dust as they arrived and departed, adding a brown haze to the scene. The buses’ diesel engines groaned. My mouth was dry. Yes, the weather-worn fellow who wore stained brown trousers and smoked a strong cigarette at the bus stop could vote: but could he afford to go into the pharmacy and pay for the latest medicines? Could he get on the internet with a new mobile phone? And if he got there, what would he see? Some roadside signs suggested that a new life in Canada was possible, ring the toll free number: who was taking up that offer?

There is also the lure of tradition. Whilst in Tunisia, I bought a ceramic tile which had the first verse of the Quran painted onto its surface. As I don’t read Arabic, I made sure to check with Arabic speaking friends later on to ensure it wasn’t actually a brownie recipe. By far and away the most impressive buildings I saw in Tunisia were the mosques: you can have your mobile phone or perfume pulled out of a glass cabinet, but this was where the quotient of majesty lay, apart from what nature had to provide. Having asked what a seemingly beneficent God wanted of them, it appears that some Tunisians accepted the answer provided by malevolent men. For a time at least, the hotel in which we stayed will fall silent, the waiters will have much fewer guests to serve the fine red wine, the hawkers and traders will have fewer people to convince that they have relations in Sheffield and upon whom to try out their Bruce Forsythe impressions (“To see you, nice!”). Work will dry up. People may go hungry; they will become angry and wonder who to blame.

There is chaos elsewhere; the satellite dish continues to draw in news from Greece. On the farm, it is easy to believe that the most important currency is the mixture of sun and rain that nature provides. Without it, we don’t have an economy at all: there is no grain or sugar that eventually gets processed into a pain au chocolat that is eaten by an investment banker at his City of London desk. That said, it’s the numbers that the banker enters into his computer that apparently matter most: no vast lorry loads of bills are shipped backwards and forwards, no Scrooge McDuck style vault sits on top of a hill, rather it’s all data which slips via cables and servers from point to point. The olive trees in Greece still grow in the Mediterranean sunshine, the clear seas lap at its shores, but because the virtual tally of the nation’s wealth in a collection of international databases kept on servers in ferociously air conditioned rooms is beyond empty, ill fares the land.

I am not sure that we all fully understand what is about to happen. The Syriza-led government apparently believes that the force of its reasoning and moral compulsion will win the day: Alexis Tsipras has stated that refusing the deal from the creditors provides an ideal position from which to negotiate with Greece’s creditors. This might have been a sustainable point of view prior to Tsipras being reminded by President Hollande, Prime Minister Renzi and Vice Chancellor Gabriel (among others) that voting “No” would result in ejection from the Euro. Nevertheless, the Greeks are apparently flying in the face of what they are being told; Greek voters interviewed on BBC’s Newsnight still seem to think that “No” is not the end. Perhaps they cannot believe that for the sake of numbers being transferred around from computer to computer by cables made of wire and thin glass that an entire people will be dumped into penury. This, however is the point where the virtual meets the real: unless Greece says “Yes”, it will be ejected from the Euro and pushed into bankruptcy and default. A return to the Drachma will not yield paradise: the currency will be inflation prone in the first instance, and as Greece’s economy is by no means self-sufficient, devaluation will sink living standards even further. Yes, a devalued Drachma could make Greek holidays and products cheaper: this will perhaps allow a recovery in time, but how long “in time” means is anyone’s guess. As this is all being done in a rather haphazard rather than planned manner, this is a recipe for anarchy.

Yet, as Tsipras reminded his people on television the other night: the sun still shines. It radiates its glow onto East Anglia, Tunisia and Greece. Nature carries on, oblivious to the chaos that people create for themselves; simultaneously people are not aware that they are mainly the authors of their own misfortune, attributing their fate to vague or actual deities like market forces and Allah. It’s depressing that we don’t currently realise this, nevertheless it also means that the future is always yet to be written.

The nominations for the Labour leadership and deputy leadership elections are now closed. As much as one may wish for more contenders to enter the race, rules are rules: one can’t write in “Keir Starmer” or “Dan Jarvis” on the ballot. Despite the many reservations which I’ve articulated previously, I’ve had time to think about for whom I will be voting.

I don’t believe Andy Burnham is the answer to Labour’s problems: previously, he has fired off a rhetorical salvo or two which have landed direct hits on Tory targets. However, I am not sure that he has a firm grasp on the fundamental issues with which Labour needs to grapple so that the party can be successful. What may be even more damning is that having given his candidacy further consideration, I can think of little else to say about him.

I don’t believe Liz Kendall is an optimal choice either: I think she has completely ingested Conservative narratives and wishes to adapt Labour policy to suit Tory predilections rather than create a viable alternative. Also, being Labour leader is just as much about party management as it is about providing inspirational leadership. My understanding, informed by well-placed sources, is that she is a prickly character: this is unlikely to work well in a scenario in which it will be necessary to influence and persuade colleagues to embrace change. Rather, were she to become leader, she may tire out the party to the point that it would be glad to be rid of her by the time 2020 comes, even if that meant defeat at the polls. Both the country and the party can ill-afford such an outcome.

I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn would be the right pick. My research indicates that he is honest and principled: however, when I consider his qualities, “pragmatic” is not a word that springs to mind. Some battles are worth fighting until the last ditch; sometimes it’s better to walk away and avoid potential traps. Some opponents are irreconcilable: bringing some on board will be necessary to build a winning team. I don’t get a strong sense that he would be sufficiently practical as leader to make these necessary judgments; I also don’t have a firm impression of his managerial style. Were he to be put in charge, no doubt there would be a rose-tinted honeymoon in which the certain parts of the party revelled in the clarity of his beliefs: meanwhile, the ruthlessly hardheaded British public would likely switch off the moment the moniker “loony left” was applied.

This leaves Yvette Cooper. She isn’t a flawless candidate: she’s part of the “Generation F” of Labour ministers, namely those who were unceremoniously booted out of Government in 2010 (to be fair, so is Burnham). In my opinion, she needs to be much firmer with her interlocutors in the media. However, she does have one quality which perhaps has been underestimated at first glance: she apparently knows that there’s no substitute for being there. For example, when Naz Shah faced a tough fight in Bradford West, Yvette was on the scene to help; it may have been this timely intervention which earned Yvette a nomination from both Naz and Judith Cummins, MP for Bradford South. Furthermore, Yvette has stated she will make addressing child poverty one of her top priorities; this is certainly a desperate problem throughout Britain. Finally, because she has positioned herself more or less in the sensible middle of the party, she is in an advantageous position to speak to every part of it. No, she is not a perfect choice: she doesn’t offer Dan Jarvis’ biography and there will be no summer of love for her ideology.  However, sometimes it’s more important to be practical than romantic: I will wholeheartedly give my first preference vote to her.

Yvette’s deputy should be a complement and a contrast. Yvette can use guile and diplomacy, her deputy ideally will be ready to attack with a ferocity that would be unbecoming of a future Premier. There is one Deputy Leadership candidate who has proven he can fulfil this function: Tom Watson. He was relentless in pursuing Rupert Murdoch; in this, he was right. Furthermore, he has a talent for making good use of the internet. If he were elected to be Deputy Leader, I believe the Labour Party, thanks to his stewardship, would be encouraged to up its online game accordingly. Similarly, he is one of the very few MPs who understands the digital economy and the value of open data: this means he can act as a conduit for old Labour to a new era.

Tom is not without his problems. He was damaged by the expenses scandal: in 2009, he allegedly claimed £4800 for food, and between 2005 and 2009, along with Iain Wright, MP for Hartlepool, he claimed £100,000 for expenses associated with renting a flat . More recently, he had to resign from his role as deputy chairman of the Labour Party in 2013 due to his supposed involvement in the fracas regarding the selection of the candidate for Falkirk. There is a perception, rightly or wrongly, that he is a bruiser equipped with a sharp pair of elbows. If he became Deputy Leader, no doubt the tabloids would have a field day, particularly the Murdoch titles which are still smarting from the wounds he inflicted upon them.

However it is Tom’s toughness, for lack of a better term, which our present era requires: he is a natural choice to instil much needed discipline in the party. This in turn would free Yvette to focus her energies on tackling the Tories and presenting herself as an alternative Prime Minister.  With any other potential leader, it is difficult to see Tom as being the right fit: but given their aptitudes and interlocking qualities, he and Yvette appear to be ideally matched.

Having said all this, I hope that they realise the challenges that lay between them and ultimate success. Social Democracy is not a growth industry in Europe: it’s apparently being replaced by knee-jerk populism and far right gibberish. UKIP is a leading exemplar of this trend. Furthermore, it is very likely that the Liberal Democrats under Tim Farron will tack left and crowd into Labour’s natural space. The Green Party will also be there to pick up disaffected left wing votes. Scotland remains a particular challenge: it may be necessary to create an operationally and politically separate Scottish Labour Party that associates itself with the rest of Labour in much the same manner that the Christian Social Union in Bavaria associates with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Navigating these difficult issues will require patience, guile, honesty and yes, a bit of brute force. If Labour picks Yvette and Tom, it will get a team that has the best chance of finding a way through.

If the summer of 2015 has a motif, it is apparently leadership, or the lack thereof.

Labour’s leadership campaign tediously malingers. It’s already clear that the candidates don’t yet inspire any great enthusiasm from the British public. Andy Burnham presents himself as being a world apart from the elite, but his career has been solely in politics: there’s no dash of real world experience (a la Alan Johnson) to add an earthiness to the mixture. Yvette Cooper suffers from a similar problem; also, she has a tendency to retreat into a shell of rehearsed phrases when hit with questions by the likes of Andrew Marr. Liz Kendall apparently believes that Labour should become a pale pink imitation of the Tories; she acts like cuts are less painful if done with blunt scissors. Jeremy Corbyn is by all accounts a very nice man and scrupulously honest (he claimed only £8.70 worth of expenses in 2010), however his appointment as Labour leader would probably be as electorally disastrous as the selection of Michael Foot (who was also nice and honest) for the same post in 1980. Mary Creagh may not get enough nominations; if that happens, it may very well be justified: her unique selling point is that she represents Wakefield. In all cases, there’s a lot of acknowledgement that Labour has a problem (Creagh is right in saying Labour is “analog in a digital age”), but not a great deal in terms of solutions being offered. The present field makes me nostalgic, neuroses and all, for Gordon Brown. Brown had a coherence, force and appeal that none of current contenders seem to possess. Whenever I’m asked who has my vote, I feel like unfurling a giant beige flag indicating my fervent neutrality.

“Who leads?” is not just a question with which Labour is grappling. In the United States, there are currently 14 “major” presidential contenders with more likely to pile in. Rather like cable television stations in that country, there’s a great many choices but nothing one would want. Hillary Clinton can’t rail against the Establishment: she has long been part of it. Bernie Sanders is the American equivalent of Jeremy Corbyn, someone who reliably speaks his mind but has difficulty getting the wider public to swallow his ideas: to borrow an old show business phrase, he doesn’t play in Peoria. Martin O’Malley is nearly unknown outside the state of Maryland and lacks the back story and charm of Jimmy Carter, the last governor to surge from obscurity to the White House. Lincoln Chaffee’s main claim to fame is having been a Republican who realised after 8 years that the GOP didn’t want a moderate from Rhode Island in their ranks.

On the Republican side, you can have any flavour you want, so long as it’s Tutti Frutti. There is everything from aspiring dynasts like Jeb Bush to union-busting headbangers like Scott Walker to a son of immigrants fearful to talk up immigration like Marco Rubio, to a surgeon, Ben Carson, who obviously wandered into the wrong room, to Dubya’s Attack of the Clones-esque sequel Rick Perry. If these choices were items on the nation’s computer desktop, it would be click, hold, drag and drop right into the Recycle Bin. Again, if asked to choose between any of the contenders, I’d unfurl an even larger beige banner. Perhaps this is more disturbing, as unlike the Labour leader, the next President will have the power to blow up the world.

It’s not all gloom and doom. The choices for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party are genuinely interesting: there’s Rupert Murdoch’s nemesis Tom Watson, the digitally savvy Stella Creasy, and Ben Bradshaw, who somehow managed to turn Exeter into a Helm’s Deep of red marooned in a vast sea of blue. All three are interesting; all three have something to say and possess an appeal that reaches beyond fringe meetings at Labour Party conferences or Fabian Society shindigs. But it’s a very strange situation in which the bottom half of a leadership combination is actually more fascinating than the top, rather as if an American Vice Presidential nominee was more qualified, intriguing and well spoken than his potential supervisor. That happened when Dick Cheney ran alongside George W. Bush: the results were catastrophic. The last time the Democrats experienced the same situation was in 1988. Then, the venerable Lloyd Bentsen was ostensibly going to report to Michael Dukakis. They didn’t win, sparing the Free World from bursting out laughing at the spectacle of Lloyd calling Mike his boss.

Why do we have such a dearth of leadership or find it in the wrong places? Perhaps the blip that was Chuka Umunna’s leadership campaign tells us something: shock, horror, he actually has a private life and dates women. Somehow this was worthy of media scrutiny to the point that he felt the only way he could maintain a modicum of dignity was to withdraw. This stems partially from media bias, but also from the laziness that plagues much of modern journalism: if they can exaggerate, obfuscate and imply sexual or financial impropriety from something that’s facile to uncover, that is much easier than investigating what is really going on.

Perhaps people have become jaded about the potential of politics to effect change. There was widespread astonishment at the levels of turnout for the Scottish referendum in 2014: 84.5% of those who could vote, did so. Maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised: it was a clear political crossroads in which a vote determined the fate of the country. Few elections just as obviously offer the prospect of momentous change, even if they will result in such a shift. It’s much easier to think all politicians are the same, the system is rigged, you fought the law and the law won.  With such a prevailing attitude, it seems like too much trouble to attend meetings, knock on doors, stuff leaflets through mail slots, i.e., all the things that will get you selected as a candidate. After all, even if you do all that and sacrifice free time and shoe leather, what chance do you have of making a difference? Those who remain regardless of these perceived obstacles are the few political enthusiasts who are decidedly not part of the mainstream; this grants a certain level of expertise, but may also curse many candidates with a distance from a discourse that would connect with the wider public. Perhaps the biggest danger of Liz Kendall’s candidacy is that if the main political menu only offers different flavours of Tory, then the talent pool could very well narrow further.

Perhaps I am to blame. Or rather, people like me. I have never stood for anything apart from one post within a trade union, I generally dislike meetings, I have chucked rhetorical water balloons at the Establishment for years without taking on any particular responsibility myself. At best, my targets were briefly doused or made a touch uncomfortable, but undeterred. I and others like me should remember: if we don’t like things, we should become part of the process and not be disheartened by setbacks along that road. We don’t have to hoist the beige flag of neutrality forever, we can run up colours of our own. I fully intend to do so…as soon as I figure out how that’s even possible.

Two weeks ago, my fiancée and I piled our remaining belongings and our grumpy cats into our aged French car; we then left Bradford. A fortnight is a stutter in time, barely a blink of an eye in the context of a year: yet Yorkshire seems a lifetime ago, shaken out of memory like a shifting pattern in a kaleidoscope. Now when I wake up in the morning, it feels like the large bedroom window, the garden I see out of it, the roses I planted (one of them white in memory of my former home) and the straight line of the distant horizon have always been part of my life.

There is plenty of evidence that this is not the case: a fair number of boxes still remain packed. The lingo in our home for a freshly unpacked carton is “I killed a box”; their murder is cause for celebration as each slaying is a symbol of settling in. Nevertheless, every morning over the past two weeks has provided a fresh game of “Where the heck is that” – whether one is trying to locate clean boxer shorts, an egg whisk or a long departed remote control. Broadband only arrived a few days ago and the aged, sturdy walls of the house prevent strong signals from penetrating throughout, a situation only slowly being remedied with strategically placed WiFi boosters. The connection to the satellite dish in the breakfast nook is dodgy, though its inability to receive Channel 5 could be better thought of as an unintended yet benevolent form of editorial control. Though a forwarding address has been put in place and registration with our new GP has been completed and final bills have been paid and direct debits redirected, it will take a bit of time for all the changes to wash through and finalise. Magazines will go missing. A few circulars of no consequence will be delivered before the advertiser gets the message. Despite these rough edges, a pattern can be discerned: given time, the last remnants of the move will be swept away and summer will largely be spent in the garden and on the lawn, connecting with nature in a way that wasn’t possible back in Bradford.

Not long after we arrived, my fiancée and I went into the garden: we found that potatoes and asparagus were growing there. The asparagus was particular cause for excitement: it generally takes years for it to yield a crop. A slight unearthing and a poke with a trowel indicated that the potatoes would be ready in a matter of weeks. Last weekend, we had fresh steamed asparagus for dinner. Additionally, we have planted a raspberry bush, carrots, tomatoes, chillies and sweet peppers. Aubergines and courgettes will follow soon. Fresh herbs are in a pot near the front door. Every day as I go outside, I look up and take into account the combination of rain and sun, hoping for the best. Around our home, fields full of rye, peas and rapeseed are being cultivated by our landlord: in two weeks, it’s been possible to discern the crops’ burgeoning. Yet summer seems all too brief a season in which the processes of growth and harvesting will take place. This is despite Cambridgeshire being extraordinarily fertile: it is like one could plant a stone in the ground and it would sprout leaves. But how fecund will it remain? The heat and sunshine of the past week almost seemed too much and digging in the garden became a dry, dusty business and the stale scent of barren earth stuck to my clothes. Only cool soothing rain provided reassurance: when it fell, the lawn exuded the scent of fresh grass, as if the earth itself had exhaled.

Probably thanks to their new proximity to nature, the grumpy cats are less irritable than when we departed Yorkshire. My cat Amelia has wandered around the garden a few times, attending to her little cat errands while patrolling the perimeter. I have seen her hiding underneath a bush, her black and white head tilted left then right. Her yellow-green eyes scanned the grounds as if to reassure herself that all was well. Having done so, she then emerged and delicately trod on the tips of her paws across the lawn.

When one needs relief from nature, there is the nearby village. It is quaint without being cloying: there’s a set of 19th century cottages, a Chinese takeaway of last resort, and an old petrol station that has been turned into a dealership for restored classic cars including a black Rover P5 which glints in the afternoon sunlight like it had just rolled off the assembly line.

The local pub serves as a cake shop as well as post office and dry cleaner. In terms of convenience, it can’t be bettered: what other post office is open on a Sunday, closes at 7 PM, offers homemade pies and has fine ale on tap in the next room? The postmaster is a kindly woman with close cropped blonde hair: when I had an urgent package to send, she told me that she would drive to the next town to ensure that it got to its destination in a timely manner. This was entirely unnecessary, the recipient could wait; nevertheless, she did it. I thanked her profusely.

After I left the pub, I thought about how prior to moving to Cambridgeshire that I was curious about the East: unlike Yorkshire, Lancashire or Cumbria, there’s no widely established reputation for the area. What are the people like? What is the character of the East? What binds the people who live there? Perhaps it is the flat landscape of the Fens which unites the region: earlier this week, a fearful wind blew up, ripping through trees and causing them to fall over and block the roads in some places. Perhaps living close to nature and knowing with how fickle it can be leads to an awareness of the value of calm, kindness and courtesy which contrasts with the environment’s vicissitudes.

Calm and courtesy prevailed at a meeting of the local branch of the Labour Party. My fiancée and I were welcomed by the officials and we met our recent (unsuccessful) Parliamentary candidate, who may have lost the election but certainly gave no impression of being defeated. We talked about Bradford’s politics and our election night; our new colleagues told us about theirs. They had a surprise triumph in one of the local contests: the freshly minted councillor was faultlessly unassuming, fully aware of the challenge that lay ahead in serving his constituents and eventually being re-elected. Labour Party meetings in Bradford had only lasted an hour at most: this one was more like a social occasion, many cups of tea and glasses of water and soft drinks were drained as we spoke at length. In total, the event lasted approximately four hours. By the time it was over, the sun was down. We went home: in the darkness I missed the turning to our home several times. When we finally arrived, we hastened to bed and slept for a solid nine hours.

It would be tempting to assume that the East is some kind of utopia: as much as one might think so when looking at an ancient abbey or drinking a pint of dark mild, it is not. It is not immune to the problems which plague the rest of Britain. My fiancée and I saw a protest in one of the larger municipalities against NHS privatisation. We have encountered Farage’s toxic influence in casual utterances about foreigners and ethnic minorities. On the edge of the quaint but not cloying village is a set of modest bungalows which speak of limited incomes. It is tempting to drive down a country lane and see vast fields full of blooming rapeseed and think that the golden blossoms somehow represent wealth, but recent falls in commodity prices tell a different story. No place is perfect, and my palate still sometimes craves the spicy flavour of Bradford’s intensity and diversity. Nevertheless, Cambridgeshire and the East have swiftly become home. The seasons will turn: the trees will change colour, maybe a light snow will eventually fall on the flat fields. I’ve been reliably informed that the Fens regularly imports weather from Norway across the North Sea, and it’s relatively easy to envisage how bitter winds will smash into anything standing out amidst the flat landscape. But we’ll adapt. The cats will huddle in warm corners, the broadband will hopefully continue to work and the sky blue Aga should keep the kitchen snug. I’ll stand at the living room window and remember summer and working in the garden. I’ll also remember that the promise of the East is not that life which is perfect.  Rather, there is a chance of a good life: so far, it is.