The only time I haven’t written to you on a Friday in at least eight years now is the day after the Brexit vote in 2016. Couldn’t do it. Paralysed. Today, the day after yet another UK General Election, I’m numb.

But I’d like to tell you a story anyway, and it’s this.

I have a thing where I will describe myself, probably far too often, as being roguishly handsome. I can’t remember when or where it started, but I do easily remember how because of course it was a joke.

It was somewhere you couldn’t see me, something like radio or a podcast, maybe just somewhere in text where there was no image of me. And the joke was really in the next line, which ran: “Ah, nobody’s going to check.”

Don’t ask me why it’s roguishly, and please don’t tell me that I do it too often because I know. But if it’s not always followed by that next line, that actual joke, it is always clear from the context that I’m lying.

I know I’m lying, you know I’m lying, it can be quite a happy little moment.

Today I thinking that I might just keep saying it seriously. I might keep saying it with a straight face. I’ll still know I’m lying, you’ll still know too, but on the scale of lies one can apparently tell now without consequences, it’s pretty piddlingly small.

For years, I’ve been politically engaged and then politically enraged, too.

I think I might be spent.