What a sucky morning so far.  My poor baby got a load of vaccinations (one oral, and a combined jab for all sorts of old-fashioned sounding diseases in each thigh).  He screamed of course, but I think he's fine now.  He seems ok anyway. Then we went to the solicitor's office to get him to witness the baby's passport form.  I was delighted with myself, because I found a solicitor who had agreed to sign it for 20 quid, when the other firms I called were looking for 40 from me, and told me to bring "50 odd" when I came - dodgy high street shysters!  Very annoying when I'd normally get this done for free at work.  Anyway, I had written in a wrong part of the form, and tipexed it, so the solicitor wouldn't sign it.  He said the passport office would not accept it with tippex on it, and he was probably right.  More importantly though, he wanted Mickey to be there too.  Why should that be, I wonder.   What if he wasn't on the scene?   What would I do then?  Anyway, I'll have to get a fresh form from the embassy and make an appointment with the solicitor on a morning that M can take off work.  Hopefully we can get this sorted soon, because we want to go to Ireland for a visit at the end of July.   We need to get a move on to get this passport on time.

It's windy and raining too, yuck.

Tomorrow is election day.  The TV keeps telling us that it's the most exciting election ever, but no one (apart from people working in the media) believe it, me included.   We're either getting a rightwing Tory-led coalition, or a rightwing Labour-led coalition (or a minority government by either of those two parties, ho hum).  The only results I'm vaguely curious about are how the SNP and UKIP do.   I would like the SNP to do brilliantly, and then very quickly hold another independence referendum, but I don't really know how they will do.  I would like UKIP to do dismally, but I predict they will do well, but not as well as they expect to.  I don't think they'll form part of the next government (they have succeeded in dragging all the debate rightward, of course).  I'll be voting for my local TUSC canditate, which is similar to throwing my vote away, but slightly more revolutionary ;)  I was sincerely tempted to spoil the ballot paper (I hear a crude drawing of a spunking cock is a popular choice this year), but I suppose I'll go with TUSC guy.   It will make no difference, but it's very hard for what I would consider a decent party to make a difference with the way the system works here.  I would much prefer if we had proportional representation here, like we have in Ireland.   Like most Irish people, I will complain about Irish politics and politicians all day long, but the PR system is one thing I think we've got right back home.

Do you know, I'm around the flat an awful lot at the moment with the baby, and not a single politician or their minions have come knocking on my door.  Brent is usually considered an extremely safe Labour seat, but I'm still surprised no one came a-knocking.  The nearest I got was someone scrawling UKIP on our side wall, which gave me a slight fright when I first saw it as I thought that whoever wrote it knew our place was the abode of lefties and was trying to intimidate us, but on reflection (and seeing his handywork all over the neighbourhood) I think it's just a coincidence that he went for our wall.  It is a nice, big (formerly blank) wall after all.

Right, now it's time to get back to the life-changing magic of tidying.