London’s embarrassing dad

Boris Johnson does something funny, isn’t he great!” seems to be the standard title for news stories about the man. Its like “Jim’s dad dresses up as Elvis, hilarious”; but I feel like Jim. Whilst some people find him hilarious and willingly vote for him, I think: “Oh God, I have to put up with this on a day-to-day basis.” I can’t even escape him when I go home to Norway: damned Olympics. And then he started dancing at the closing ceremony: that drunk-middle-aged-dad-at-a-wedding-dance (not for the faint of heart).

That I was never a fan of him or Conservatism in the first place probably doesn’t help, but I was quite detached from him until I started at Imperial in 2010, thinking of him as more of an idiot who I could ignore completely. From then on, as I increasingly identified London as somewhere I lived rather than just a place where I studied, I came to realise just how much of a buffoon he was (or was pretending to be), and just how much he was getting on my nerves.All the other kids find Jim’s dad’s eccentricity hilarious.

It increasingly becomes a case of other people finding him hilarious, and it infuriates me like it would Jim. It reminds me (Jim) of just how darned annoying he is, and just how annoying it is to have to constantly put up with him, not being able to go a day without being reminded of why I didn’t vote for him (Jim wishing before going to sleep every night that he had a normal dad). All the other kids find Jim’s dad’s eccentricity hilarious, which infuriates him further because they don’t realise what it’s like to have to put up with it all the time, and seem oblivious to the fact that Jim has good reason for hating it all.

Anyway, Boris Johnson does a good job of doing ‘hilarious to many, embarrassing to some’ things, just like an eccentric dad for whom – “Dad, don’t walk too close to me.” “But why? I’m funny aren’t I?” “No.” – is a daily conversation with the begrudging child (who is then passed off as a miserable git). But then, this may just be me acting a bit too much like a disgruntled teenager. Or maybe Boris is!