Two days before the election, today I canvassed some of the more “difficult” areas of my ward. It had interesting results. I had one man who greeted me with a tirade about how we f-ing politicians were all the f-ing same. (I said “sorry to disturb you” and walked off.)

Then I had an encounter that started as a fairly standard: “what do you want” shouted through the door. I explained “Green Party”, “election” etc, and got the response: “We vote Labour here.”

Fine, free country etc.

I’d knocked on a couple of doors down the balcony, and was in a dead-end, when I heard someone hiss “go”. I turned around and saw, a rottweiler from the “Labour” household, approaching rather quickly, hackles raised, having obviously been sooled on me. (They’d shut the door after letting the dog out.)

It was between me and the stairs. Luckily, it was a soft rottweiler really – I took a couple of fast steps toward it, rather than the away it probably expected, then as it went without great conviction for my leg wacked it, not very hard (the whole thing was not the dog’s fault, and I didn’t want to make it too angry), across the face with my floppy cardboard folder.

It decided it wasn’t really that interested. Luckily.

I left. Not at a run. Quite.
Lest this should discourage anyone from getting involved in politics let me say this is highly unusual – in fact I was talking to some experienced people later in the evening and they’d never heard anything like it.

I’m very tempted to go back tomorrow and stick a leaflet through their door, just to show I wasn’t cowed. Would be satisfying, although bad politics, since it would make them more likely to turn out to vote, I’d judge.

I may not be around a lot this week, since I’m going to be very involved with the final election run-in. For those just joining the story, I’m running for the Greens for Regent’s Park ward on Camden Council, and there is a significant chance that I might be elected.

If you’re wondering what a local election campaign in Britain is like, the BBC has a report on the Norwich campaign, which bears some resemblance to Camden, except they are, from the Green Party perspective, one more campaign along from us. We’re hoping to get at least half a dozen councillors, who could well end up with the balance of power in a NOC (No Overall Control, as the jargon has it) council, which is the situation in Norfolk now.

Campaigning basically involves knocking on lots of doors, or ringing lots of security buzzers, asking people to vote for us, and to put up our posters. (Highgate in particular has a real poster war going – I was in a street there yesterday in which about 25 per cent of the houses have posters, which shows that people will get involved in politics if you try hard enough. No Conservative posters, however – not sure if the Tories don’t do posters, or if being a Tory is so embarrassing that people refuse to publicly acknowledge it!)

I’ve often taken pleasure to see, in both my Clerkenwell and Regent’s Park flats, bees buzzing around on my balconies. Not sure what geranium honey would taste like, but hopefully OK. (Yes, I’m a gardener who goes generally for the easy option.)

So I was sad to read in the Guardian yesterday that these were certainly not “wild” bees, but from some domestic hive. I don’t suppose it matters to the bees, but it certainly might matter to the environment that the wild bee population has been lost, and even the domesticated population is in trouble, and reliant on imports to maintain its numbers:

“Britain’s apiary crisis can be traced back to the Nineties when hives were first struck by varroa destructor – a parasitic mite that feeds off the bodily fluids of bees. Populations plummeted, particularly among the nation’s wild swarms which have virtually been eradicated. Only colonies tended by people survive in this country today. New feral colonies are sometimes established but without a keeper to help will only survive for a short time before succumbing to disease.

[And]’New strains of varroa, resistant to the chemicals that had been used to treat the condition, have started to infect hives in the past year. Their appearance has triggered renewed alarm, with beekeepers reporting major dips in honey production.’

(An aside: this reminds me of a recent editing job, which involved the word “wanna-bee”. Buzz, buzz.)