In which we wait

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Are you on the edge of your seat for the first ever leaders' debate? I know. I'm not either. I hold a forlorn hope that it might serve to set the entire process ablaze and turn the sluggish state of politics on its head. I have a tiny dream that once it is over, people in the pubs and bars and buses shall talk of nothing else. We shall talk of it to our grandchildren, in years to come. 'Grandchildren,' we shall say, a faraway look in our eyes, 'remember the night of April the 15th.'

My horrid fear is that in reality there will be a terrible collective shrug, and the citizens shall merely ask what possessed Nick Clegg to wear that particular tie.

Or, almost worse, there will be a slight pause, in which people remark that David Cameron isn't really that posh, Clegg has a tendency to sound petulant, and Gordon Brown is looking more and more like the mad uncle in the attic. Then they will go back to discussing the cloud of volcanic ash that is hovering over poor old Blighty, like a geological metaphor.

Here is my prediction of the debate itself, for what it is worth. Clegg will not come quite as brilliantly out of it as all the commentators suspect. Cameron will do well if he can face the economy head on and make one of his little self-deprecating jokes (he does have a good sense of humour, which the other two do not display). Brown could pull off his doughty elder statesman stick with the devil you know number, but I have a suspicion he will not be able to stop himself doing that freakish fake smile which his focus groupers have obviously told him to deploy. The problem is that he breaks it out at the most inappropriate moments, so it looks as if he has some kind of worm in his brain. Then it will be: mad uncle, back to the attic.

I am almost certainly wrong. I just hope it is not a festival of dullness, soundbite, platitude, and mind-sapping minutiae. For those of you playing drinking games, if you want to get really hammered I suggest 'fairness', 'new modern Conservative Party', 'the British people', 'the many not the few',  'the big society', 'a future fair for all', 'hard-working Britons', and possibly, should Gordon lose his temper, 'Lord Ashcroft'. If you want to stay stone-cold sober, mark your card with 'national debt', 'it was all my fault', and 'bugger off back to Eton, Lord Snooty'.

In the meantime, to take your mind off things, here are some more of my utterly pointless but mildly diverting collages. Today, the colour is blue:

And another version:

And one more, of three of my favourite things: dogs, snow and Scotland:

Finally, just for fun:

These are mostly for my friend So Lovely, who is unsure about the new Hipstamatic craze, and likes a bit of true colour in her photographs.

(All snaps by me except the eye, which is torn from a very ancient magazine and is stuck on my office wall.)