Day 79. Here comes a soul saver. (20/3/19)

(Soundtrack: "Listen to Lizzo and Missy Elliott team up on the fierce new single 'Tempo'"

You know what, NME.com. Go on then. I'll give it a shot. Anything to distract at the moment if we're honest.

And it's okay. Soon as the bass kicked in, J stuck her head in the room, said, "I like this, you knew I'd like this."

Bass. Very big with my wife. Loves hip hop for the bass. Me? Not so much. This is okay though. Got a nice keyboard bit going on. It's not annoying me. 'Not annoying me' is basically as good as modern music gets.

So, Lizzo gets the coveted Ian Salmon 'not really annoying me' seal of apathy.

Oh. And then it ended. Didn't really 'do' anything. It was there for a bit, then it wasn't. There'll be a lot of gaps when it's played on the radio. Probably not the point anymore. How very twentieth century of me.)

Honest to god. Brexit. Not a clue.

I did CityTalk at lunch, met up with another writer for a chat, ended up going to a writers' drop in session which was excellent and made me think maybe instead of doing this every day I could have written a short story each day. Full collection by the end of the year. That'd be interesting wouldn't it? Anyone up for me doing that next? Maybe next year?

(Note to self: stop doing this to yourself, stop having impractical ideas that just mean more bloody work. Sit down, read a book, watch a film, play the guitar. Discover the joys of doing bugger all.)

(Note to the self above: never happening, don't kid yourself.)

Met a genuine Brexiteer. Certain of the fact that we'll be better off out. Wasn't entirely sure how to react to that. Never been confronted by this before. Emblematic of the echo chamber we live in.

She was intelligent, articulate and convinced. And she wasn't taken with the fact that my response to her stating that she had read a point in the Daily Telegraph was, "Well there you go then." Think she's right not to be taken. That's not how you debate somebody.

I'm not sure how you debate anybody any longer. In the time I've been out it appears that Donald Tusk has said that he'll grant an extension on Brexit. If Parliament agrees to Theresa May's deal. Which is the only deal the EU are giving.

So we're leaving, aren't we? That's happening. I'm in the study. Anything could have happened while I've been in here. We might have a general election. We might have yet another interminable Tory leadership contest. And that's what this has all been about anyway. Brexit was never about the good of the country or some bizarre idea of sovereignty. Brexit has always been about one thing and one thing only: which stupidly rich idiot would lead a party that hates the working class.

It's done. It's over. We're going out and we're not coming back. We allowed the Tories to play games with the country and they broke it. Which they always kind of wanted to do.

The significance of today's title? The night that Tony Blair brought in the first Labour government in nearly twenty years (and we all know the things that went wrong but, for a while there, there was some really good stuff going on) I was at a Charlatans gig. And we knew it was coming, we knew we were getting rid of the bastards and we were taking back control, as it were.

We kidded ourselves. This shower of bastards? Worse than Thatcher. More evil and, at the same time, utterly inept.

God help us all.

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