Old Notebooks

I'm rather busy with exams at the moment, so am reluctant to write up with anything new or involving non-legal intellectual exercise. However, as my next exam was on constitutional and administrative law, I thought it salutary to refer back to one of my old notebooks from election day last year. The notebook was written for personal perusal, so is rather fragmentary and lacks the even threadbare cohesion my blogs often have. Nonetheless it should be intelligible:

[NB I've inserted a couple of notes that clarify references in brackets.]

06.05.10

so i’d voted in the morning, partially to show by example that Mirka [1] should vote. but also because i wanted to vote
voting is r democracy.

to the point (now 10.20pm ish), went to N Gallery, after cycling to Waterstones for Stillinger’s Complel Keats Complete, and happened upon LaRoche Foucauld’s Charles I Insulted. [2]

what happens to these kings + queens
when translated into a society such as ours

common, and commons, and that r inexact impossible ‘common man’ blowing smoke in the haughty’s reader’s face, as his immaculate historicity was being reconstructed.

It makes no sense to tell a country about Europe,
where English history was all Kings + Queens, [3]
The historical record is scratched bombed and torn,
just as much as a map of Charles I’s face.
Godsend of an image. [4]

[1] our Polish cleaning lady. She had been here long enough to vote. No, I'm not proud of having a cleaning lady.
[2] a painting on display at the National at the time; Charles is shown haughtily reading a book, while a roundhead blows smoke in it; the image of his face was damaged during WW2 and had yet to be repaired when I was there. http://bit.ly/jVIyZH
[3] paraphrasing E H Gombrich's Little History of the World
[4] Charles believed in the divine right of kings to rule.


[Also see this great article on prisoner's rights: http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/02/prisoners_voting_rights]