July. The time of year we all look forward to for a holiday. My Finnish colleagues have already been enjoying theirs, taking their traditional summer solstice escape to absorb as much Vitamin D as they can before darkness returns. Last week my American friends had their annual summer break, celebrating the colonial uprising of 1776 with barbecues and road trips. Soon it will be my French neighbours, disappearing south so fast on the last day of the month that their portals are left swinging like saloon doors in a Western bar.
I, too, am looking forward to a holiday this month. A holiday from politics. I'm done with it. I've had enough of it. In a year that started unconsolably with the death of David Bowie, and became steadily worse with a never-ending parade of celebrity deaths, we seem to be stuck in a Somme-like, unmoving frontline of hand-to-hand political combat which shows no signs of abating.
Incredibly, the Brexit referendum result only became known two and a half weeks ago. Since then, British political life has imploded, consuming all of us who watch or read the news with it. As if the Brexit result wasn't bad enough, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - who'd rolled the dice to begin with - announced his resignation, waking up Her Majesty's Opposition, whose front bench suddenly realised that the physics teacher leading them was no good. This was followed by a gathering of leading Tory Brexiters to vie for the vacating leadership of their own party (oh, and prime minister, too), only to gradually drop off the contest by either Machiavellian knifing or realisation of their sheer inadequacy (and that must also include the hideous, gurning, casual racist Nigel Farage). And now we have the prospect of a leadership contest in the Labour Party, dragging this dull Westminster summer on further. And don't get me going about Euro 2016 or even Chris Evans doing the decent thing and walking the plank from his lousy Top Gear reboot.
I can at least afford a break from all things football, at least for the five weeks until the Premier League gets going again. And I've got enough episodes of 'old' new Top Gear on DVD and Netflix to not particularly bother missing Evans at all. But the one thing I really - really - need a break from is politics.
As I posted on the eve of the Brexit vote, I have little time for politicians at the best of times. And although I recognise that the murdered MP Jo Cox was that exception - a politician with integrity and a genuine concern for her constituency - what has followed since June 23 has left me exhausted. Exhausted by the naked ambition, the step-over-your-dead-grandmother egomaniacism and the fawning inconsistencies (viz Jacob Rees-Mogg, who first backed Boris, then backed Gove, then backed Leadsom - "all the horses", in his words - only to then throw his weight behind Theresa May as the anointed new Tory leader and PM).
In 2002 May herself asked the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth: "Why has the public become so cynical about politics and politicians? If we're being honest I think we know the answer. In recent years a number of politicians have behaved disgracefully and then compounded their offences by trying to evade responsibility. We all know who they are." These last few weeks in the UK - and, to some extent, the US too - have given fullsome answer to that proposition.
I wouldn't care less if I didn't hear another word from the political class again. That might sound like I'm sticking my head in the sand but, to be honest, the only thing I want to do with sand right now is to flop out on it with a good book and the entire John Martyn catalogue on-loop on my iPod.
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