After months of nursing the worst kept secret in Europe, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally revealed the next general election date.

First he had to visit the Queen to get her permission to dissolve Parliament.  Since “dissolve” sounds a bit drastic (and possibly painful) the press usually turns that verb into a noun, and instead explains that the PM asks HM for a “dissolution”. 

Never mind.  It amounts to the same thing: the Prime Minister takes a flash car to Buckingham Palace, bows to Her Majesty (who, like everyone else, has known for months what’s coming) and before you can say Peter Mandelson, everyone is melting.

And now I’ve got to work out how to get a vote, non-person that I have become, ever since I moved onto my boat.  My tenants will be registered at my address and they will have removed my name, assuming I would re-register elsewhere. 

The problem is, my boat has no address…  And, though I get parcels and deliveries at the pub, I don’t think I can claim to be resident there.  Once upon a time only landowners could vote in this country.  It still seems to be true that only people with addresses can.

Meanwhile my Baby will be a first time voter this election, and she is very keen.  She has signed up to volunteer for the Liberal Democrats.  Her father says she can put up posters in the windows of his house in north Oxford.  He is wondering if that will cost him business as an economist-for-hire, but he’s willing to take the risk.  His beloved grandmother was an early 20th century member of the Liberal party, and nostalgia beats billable hours.

As for me, though I voted in the European elections last year, this will also be my first general election.  I became a British citizen a few weeks too late to vote last time. So I asked my Baby to find out from her Lib Dem organiser friends how her homeless mother could be franchised.

She declined.  She thoroughly disapproves of the way I live, and when I ask why, she gives me a long list, beginning: 1. You shouldn’t risk drowning when you cross the threshold in the morning.

Right.  I’ve got until 6 May to work out how, and for whom, to cast my vote. 

When it is all done, dissolving will make way for kissing of hands.  There’s nothing in the world like British politics.  What larks!