FOR THE first time in a decade, I am struggling this week with what to say in this hallowed space (I hallow it, even if some readers don't).

Not because I am lost for words but because there is a certain process underway nationally that, quite frankly, I would rather forget.

For they came this week and they were slightly less popular than the Mormons and other fringe evangelicals, whom one suspects are at least genuine in their beliefs. This is more than you can say for the Clip Board Coterie (CBC).

The CBC are, I should explain, the door-to-door canvassers for the politicians (sorry about such foul language, kiddiewinks). For once again, and a year earlier than necessary, it is General Election time and it has filled the air of Beggarsdale with a veritable frenzy of indifference.

And that's why I am so hesitant about bringing it once again to the attention of my long-suffering reader.

A poll of the great British public taken before the date of the poll was actually announced showed that 84 per cent of us were already bored by the campaign before it even started.

This towering lack of interest is quite unusual in Beggarsdale, because we love to have something to bicker about and what could give us a better cause for bickering than the professional bickerers themselves (i.e. MPs).

We also have in the Dale a total range of the political spectrum, from the Guardian-reading, state-employed Lefties amongst the offcumdens to the Genghis Khan faction led by Cousin Kate.

People like Owd Tom are even more extreme: he thinks all politicians should be put up against a wall and shot but he is probably kidding (we hope).

Yet the fact of the matter is that relatively sane and quite nice people like the Rev Rupe and the Doc cannot raise any enthusiasm for this particular election. Why?

The CBC enthusiasts have been having a hard time on the doorstep (slammed doors some of the time) and even our MP was virtually ignored when he called in at the Beggars' Arms early doors, all smiles and bonhomie, shaking hands with everyone, including several passing hikers who hadn't the foggiest idea who he was.

That's perhaps not surprising because, if we didn't see his picture in the paper from time to time, we wouldn't have known who he was either. We haven't seen him in the village for quite a long time. In fact - let's think - it was four years ago. During the last general election. What a coincidence!

As Owd Tom pointed out when our man had left, looking decidedly put out, "That's trouble with yon lot. They never meet ordinary folk unless their after us votes. Nay wonder they've absolutely no idea abaht what we want."

And that, it seems, just about sums up pre-election languor in Beggarsdale.

People in this Dale are worried about crime, yobs, council tax, the steady destruction of our civilised society by a fiendish axis of awful parents, terrible schools, trash television, mindless media and mediocre MPs, the vast majority of whom have never had a proper job in their lives.

o The Curmudgeon is a satirical column by a fictitious character set in a mythical village.