Vox Meditantis

Do you vote in political elections?

Do I vote? DO I VOTE? What sort of question is that to ask a woman of my age? Course I bleedin’ vote. What d’you think I am, some sort of cabbage? I’ve got a pulse, ain’t I? Well, last time I checked I ‘ad, though this left knee is doing its level best to finish me off before the next general election, I’ll tell you that for nothing.

Seventy-five years I’ve been on this earth. Seventy-five. And I ‘ave voted in every single election since I were old enough to do so, local, national, the lot. Even that dreadful business with the European referendum, which I will not be discussing today, thank you very much, because my blood pressure is already doing something very creative up there and I don’t need any further encouragement.

I live just off the Cowley Road, if you must know. Not the pretty part of Oxford that they put on the biscuit tins. Not the dreaming spires and the punting and the young men in their blazers sipping something expensive outside a college that’s older than the concept of decency. No, no. I’m round the back, love. Where the bins are. Where the bus is always late and the cashpoint’s been broken since October and nobody from the council has the faintest idea we exist unless they want our vote, at which point – oh! – suddenly they’re very interested. Suddenly they’re knocking on the door with their leaflets and their lanyards and their great big shining faces and I think, you’ve got a nerve, you really have.

Last time one of ’em came round – and I won’t say which party, I’m not completely stupid – he were about twelve years old, this lad. Lovely suit on him. Hair all done. Clipboard. Oh, he were very pleased with himself. Stands on my doorstep and he says, “Good morning! I just wondered if we could count on your support?” And I looked at him. I looked at him for a good long moment. And I said, “Son, the last time your party did anything useful for this street, the Beatles were still together. So no. You may not count on my support. But you can count yourself lucky I haven’t still got the dog.”

He went a very interesting colour and shuffled off sharpish. I watched him go. I might’ve felt a tiny bit sorry for him. Might’ve. He were only young. Probably believed in it all still, poor love. That’s the tragedy of youth, isn’t it. You still think it matters who you vote for. You still think someone’s listening.

But I DO vote. That’s the thing. Even though I know – I KNOW – that half of them are only in it for themselves, and the other half are in it for themselves but have learned to talk about “communities” and “hardworking families” with a straight face, which I suppose is a skill of sorts. I vote because my mother voted. And her mother before her. And those women didn’t have the right to vote for a very long time, and when they finally got it, they did not take it lightly, and neither do I.

My mum, God rest her, she used to get dressed up to go to the polling station. I’m not exaggerating. She’d put on her good coat. The navy one with the buttons. She said it were a civic occasion and you should look the part. I think about her every single time I go. Every time. Even now when I’m stomping up there in my waterproof jacket and my bad knee and my general air of barely-contained fury – which is apparently just my face now, according to my daughter, thank you, Sandra – I think about Mum in that coat. And I mark my X. And I think, there you go, Mum. Did it again.

Not that it does a fat lot of good, mind you. We’ve ‘ad Labour round here, we’ve ‘ad the Lib Dems fluttering about like confused moths, we’ve ‘ad Conservatives who looked physically pained to be in this part of the city, like they’d taken a wrong turn on the way to somewhere nicer. And what ‘ave we got to show for it? The community centre shut. The library – the LIBRARY, I cannot talk about the library without getting upset – the library went to part-time hours and then no hours and now it’s being turned into flats “with a community space,” which means a room no bigger than my airing cupboard that you have to book three weeks in advance. A LIBRARY. Where children used to go. Where I used to go. Do you know what a library meant to kids like us? Do you? It meant everything. It were the only place you could go that were warm and quiet and full of possibility and nobody was trying to sell you something or move you on.

Sorry. I’m – I’m alright. Don’t look at me like that.

The point is. The point is, you vote because if you don’t, you’ve got no right to complain. And I have a great deal of complaining to do. It is, frankly, my primary hobby. I have put years into it. I am not giving up my right to complain. I will be complaining until they’re lowering me into the ground and even then I’ll probably have a few thoughts about the quality of the floral arrangements.

My neighbour Derek – lovely man, complete fool – he told me last year he’d decided not to vote anymore. “It doesn’t make any difference,” he says. “They’re all the same.” I said, “Derek, if you don’t vote, you don’t get to open your mouth to me ever again on the subject of politics, the council, the state of the pavements, the bus route, the bins, the planning application for that eyesore on the corner, or anything else that is in any way connected to how this country is run, which is everything, Derek, because everything is connected to how this country is run.” He looked a bit taken aback. I said, “Furthermore, every person who decides their vote doesn’t matter is one less voice for people like us, and there are already not enough voices for people like us, so sit down, Derek, and put your polling card somewhere you won’t lose it.” He voted. Course he did. He always does what I tell him in the end. Most people do.

I know I’m not easy. I know that. My Sandra tells me approximately four times a week. “Mum, you don’t have to say every single thing you think.” And I say, “Why not?” And she says, “Because it upsets people.” And I say, “Good. Maybe they needed upsetting.” She thinks I’m difficult. I think I’m honest. There’s a difference. I’ve earned the right to be honest. When you’ve worked all your life and paid your taxes and watched things get worse and still kept going and still turned up – you’ve earned it.

So yes. I vote. Every time. Rain, shine, dodgy knee, or full-on personal apocalypse. I get myself up there to the church hall – which always smells faintly of something I can’t identify and hope is just old hymn books – and I take my little pencil on its little string, and I make my mark, and I think of my mum in her navy coat.

And then I come home, put the kettle on, and prepare myself to be thoroughly disappointed.

Which, after seventy-five years, I am very, very good at.

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Bob Lynn | © 2026 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.