Beginning 2015!

Well, the first day of my 2015 was spent ill in bed. I would like to claim that it was a monster hangover from New Year's Eve celebrations but, as we saw in the New Year with cold cures rather than champagne, that is definitely not the case. No, I got up feeling grotty, sat down to a little breakfast and had some kind of temperature spike that left me feeling woozy and landed me back in bed shivering round a hot water bottle. Major league fuss! Husband running about looking after me! Daughter round with medication for me! If I had not felt so awful I might have quite enjoyed it. 

This morning, still not 100% restored, but considerably better than yesterday, I am up and about, feeling rather as if someone has stolen a day out of my life. I do object to being ill! But today it is Phil's turn to shiver in bed with the hot water bottle. We are really quite organised, even taking it in turns to be ill so that we can look after each other! 

 What I want to know is which member of the family gave us the dreaded lurgy. Almost all of them have been sharing germs with us. This is a Christmas present we didn't need. However, all of that is so last year! Let's put it behind us and get on with the new. 

New Year's honours have been awarded. The poet Carol Ann Duffy has been made a Dame, which is lovely, a well deserved honour and given after she has proved herself over years. I have always objected to people receiving honours for gaining medals at the Olympics or winning the Tour de France. Surely you need to show that you are consistently good over time before they award you with national honours. Am I growing old and grumpy? Possibly not. Over in France, economist Thomas Picketty, writer of a bestselling book on economics, has turned down his nomination for the Légion d'Honneur, on the grounds that the state cannot decide who is honourable!!! 

He is in illustrious company in doing so. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir all rejected it in the past. It must take a special kind of self confidence, though, to stand up and say you don't want their awards! Or maybe you just need your own conception of honour and then stick to it. 

Over here in the UK, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and his Spanish lawyer wife, Miriam González Durántez have been giving a joint interview. Apparently she is rated more highly than he is and he has been denying wanting to use her popularity to enhance his party's electoral fortunes. Now, she sounds like a very sensible lady, refusing to trail along during lengthy electoral campaigns. She has her own busy professional and family life and although declaring herself "willing to help" during past campaigns has said that that she could not just take weeks off to stand next to him while he makes speeches. 

Good for her. Personally I am more interested in what the politician has to say, not whether his/her partner is on the campaign trail. I am going to be voting for a political, not his family, after all. 

Years ago our politicians' partners did not figure in their political lives to anything like the extent they do now. Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer need his/her wife/husband standing alongside him/her when he/she does the budget speech? Does the Prime Minister need his/her partner alongside for every statement? Good grief, doctors don't ask their partners to be there when they explain medical stuff. My husband didn't accompany me to teaching job interviews! I really dislike this presidential style of top-politician. Even the French, who used to keep their politician's family life a big secret, are into it now. And look what kind of scandals have erupted for them as a result. 

In the final analysis, being a politician is just a job. Okay, it's an important job and no doubt it's easier to do if your partner is on your side but that doesn't mean they need to be BY your side every time you appear in public. 

I suppose it's another aspect of the current obsession with the "personality". In an age when you can be famous for being famous and when every element of the lives of the famous is examined in minute detail, then I expect it's inevitable. 

But it doesn't mean I have to like it!