7 YR OLD: So, Mum. Whatever party you vote for, do you get a party-bag at the end of it?
ME: No. Sadly not.
7 YR OLD: So why would you bother?
ME: Dunno. Ask Russell Brand.
10 YR OLD: Is he the one what killed ‘Evita’? His photo-painting thing is everywhere.
ME: I’m sure that he’d like to have wiped out at least a few of Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musicals.
7 YR OLD: Well, I think that it’s rubbish! I’ve never been to a party without a party-bag. Even at my own party I got one.
ME: Which your father disagreed with. In principle. Until you kicked off, big time about it all.
10 YR OLD: Anyway. It’s all very confusing – this election stuff. For me, I mean. What if … half your family vote the Red Ed lot, the other vote the posh blue-boys who hate poor people, and half vote for the ones who hate foreigners with no money and who come over here and take all our dentists off us?
ME: There’s more parties than that…
10 YR OLD: I DO know that, Mum! I’m not totally stupid! So.. what if also… half of your family vote for the one who used to be in Last of the Summer Wine – Cleggy chap. And the other half vote for umm.. yes – the green ones what love squirrels and trees but can’t empty bins… what would that make me living in? Like… a mixed racialist family or summat?
ME: I don’t know. But I wish I had never wasted £9.99 on that children’s books for politics by Andrew Marr. Because you clearly haven’t been reading it. And maybe I should be paying for ‘Fun Maths’ books for you instead, because you’ve got far too many ‘halves’ in your little example there, haven’t you?
10 YR OLD: (to her brother.) Why is it that grown-ups think that they know everything about the world and about politics sort-of-things and then when you ask them a simple question, they answer it with another flippin’ question? Daddy hates it when those interviewers are going ‘Answer the Question!’ He spits when he talks and everything.
7 YR OLD: Anyway. If had to vote for a party. It’d be a LEGO party.
10 YR OLD: I’d vote for the Cake party.
ME: Sounds like an attractive prospect.
10 YR OLD: Actually, you made him (looks at brother) a birthday cake that had LEGO on it once. It was the volcano one. Where the cake collapsed and you chucked a load of red icing over it and LEGO men were dying in it.
7 YR OLD: Oh yeah! That was brill!
10 YR OLD: And you let me put the dismembered head in the lava didn’t you? That was the funniest bit.
ME: Actually, the cake *didn’t* collapse. I wanted it to be a volcano… I’m actually not too bad at cakes, you know!
7 YR OLD: They always look weird. But they taste nice. Usually.
10 YR OLD: Actually – that’s what that that Queen way back in history said – who must have voted Cameron – as she went ‘oooh – let them eat cake’ about all the poor scummy people like us. And then they chopped her head off for saying it.
7 YR OLD: That was so mean.
10 YR OLD: Yes but it was a revolution and in a revolution things get violent – don’t you even know that? Will our Royal Family get beheaded if the Welsh ones or the Scottish ones get in, Mum?
ME: No. Don’t be silly. Things like that aren’t allowed in our country.
10 YR OLD: Well- in a revolution everything goes a bit mental. People get all twisted and evil.
7 YR OLD: I bet Dad would chop their heads off.
10 YR OLD: Yeah he would. He thinks we should like, bin the Royals. Big time.
ME: Daddy wouldn’t do anything of the sort. Especially if they offered him an OBE. Or an MBE. Or anything that would appeal to his deep-seated working class inferiority complex. It’s all about deference, when it comes down to it.
7 YR OLD: …He’d have to wear a black mask though. Like the one we saw in that Tower of London.
10 YR OLD: True. Otherwise they’d know his identity. And the royals that hadn’t been beheaded would seek their revenge on his children and they’d be round here – chopping our heads off!
7 YR OLD: (Squeals, suddenly frightened at prospect of the House of Windsor trucking up in west Yorkshire with a big axe.) Stop it! Don’t!
10 YR OLD: Well, not the new baby princess of course. She’s so cute and she’s a girl. So she wouldn’t do anything evil like that.
ME: Look. Can we please change the subject.
10 YR OLD: Okay. We’re poor. Get the cake tin out. It’s our only hope in life!
ME: One day you might be writing a PhD thesis at University on this kind of thing….
10 YR OLD: Not if Cammy-boy stays in. You won’t be able to afford me going.
Haven’t you told the kids about Monster raving loony party yet? Oh and can I please have your cake recipe?
I forgot all about that Screaming Lord Sutch chappie! How dull and serious politics is these days…
And cake tip…microwave it. Never fails to explode…