Here Comes The Door-Knocker

“You've got the gift of the gab, Clency!”

There I am, stood in what could only be described as an Arctic rain shower! I wasn’t queuing up for the turnstiles at the Emirates, nor waiting to get into a bar to watch us take on Leicester in a critical Premier League match. Oh no. I had found myself in Sherwood, east Nottingham, on my sixth door-knocking session in seven days. It’s all part of a campaign for a local candidate in a Council by-election next week. When I actually write all that down, it comes across as some kind of punishment from God. Only it has not been anything of the sort. Remarkably it’s the complete opposite and most bizarrely of all; I cannot fully comprehend how much fun it’s been!

So how did we get here? Well before my father so rudely interrupted my writing hobby a little over two years ago, I’d found myself completely gushing from an experience watching a fledgling political party break new ground 7000 miles away in Mauritius. I dreamed of an alternative vision for the UK and had become exasperated by a political consensus in Britain.  I yearned for a day where an electorate would have a clear and defining choice.

For so long as I live, I will never forget the moment I heard that Jeremy Corbyn was putting together a bid to become the leader of the Labour Party.  What followed would be something that I now look back upon as the “summer of love”, where an unstoppable force emerged from nowhere to complete the most wonderful and unimaginable political fairy-tale of my life.

I’d be here for days recounting the whirlwind of the past two years and extraordinary people I’ve met and places I’ve visited, many of which I’d never been to in my life before. One of my oldest friends even went so far as to refer to me as a ‘Corbyn groupie’, such had been my tenacity to attend various rallies around the country.

There’s no doubt in my mind that nobody else in politics today could have inspired me like this. There is only probably one other public figure who I have as much time for, and he is so suspicious of politics as a whole that my wishy-washy fantasy of him becoming the MP for the part of London where I was raised, has less chance of being realised than his own football team winning a trophy any time soon!

Of course, the history between me and Corbyn is well documented. MP for where I did all of my schooling, our paths would cross several years later as I found myself immersed in the Chagossians quest for justice. Observing his work at close quarters further inspired my own efforts while working on the cause. Succinctly, there is no other Parliamentarian today who has more integrity, compassion or strength of convictions to lead this country. No other politician can inspire as much hope behind a desire for change.

And how this country needs to change!

To where I now find myself, knocking on doors for a potential Councillor who has identical political views to me. It has been an opportunity to ‘test the lyrics’, so to speak, and ensures that when I am on the doorstep campaigning for the General Election next month, I am able to convey my arguments confidently. Why wouldn’t I? I am canvassing (albeit indirectly under the political system we have here) for a Labour leader who if he becomes Prime Minister, would be a dream come true for me.

I honestly have no idea what the next few weeks will bring. The polls tell us this election is a foregone conclusion but they have been wrong about so many things in recent years that one can never truly take anything for granted anymore. What I do know is that I am going to throw everything I can (short of putting my day job on the line!) into this canvassing and see where it goes. Maybe this is the only time in my life I am ever involved like this and if that’s the case, I may as well put my all into it. Thus, I could look back in future knowing I tried everything. This doesn’t feel like a waste of time or a futile fight against a tide. It feels like my only chance to make something unbelievable, somehow become possible. I will dare to dream because I am honest enough to know that I don’t think anything like this will ever happen in my lifetime again. To coin a phrase my boss at work has a fondness to deploy, “I got one shot at this”. And judging by the feedback from some I have been out on the rounds with so far, I might actually be quite good at it too!

NB: It was always going to take something I felt super-passionate about to end my self-imposed writing exile.  I had spent the past two years after my dad’s untimely passing utilising my talents in other ways, helping my big sister edit her Midwifery thesis and assisting my Godchildren’s mother with her university assignments.  There were several occasions I thought I had come to the point where I would pick it up again, as early as the FA Cup final of 2015 in fact.  The adventures of Corbyn, became the fairy-tale that would’ve written itself, but still I couldn’t make that leap. Then there was brexit and the theft of Mauritian democracy, both of which equally riled me more than most will ever know. And yet it took being stood in an icy-rain shower on the streets of Nottingham to finally trigger the spark to write again….