Rendition.

I sign a lot of online petitions and write to my MP fairly regularly, mostly through advocacy sites such as 38 Degrees and SumofUs.org. As I live overseas and many of these petitions require a UK postcode to verify residency, I normally provide my parents’ address. They live in the Home Counties, a part of the world where everyone bleeds blue and howls about any ingress on their inalienable rights to drive massive SUVs, head-butt foxes or sneer at immigrants. As such, I sometimes find myself wondering whether anyone’s monitoring the source of all these inflammatory appeals. Because if they are, they’re going to have a massive blip in their data, a livid carnelian spike in the sea of conservatism that will force them to conclude that my parents’ quiet little house, in its quite little cul-de-sac, is a seething hotbed of radicalism. In my more paranoiac moments, I even worry about the possibility of a military coup or a ‘UKIP d’état’, because if there is one, I suspect my poor old parents, who are moderate to a tee, will be among the first to be black-bagged and zip-tied into the back of the vans. I also know they read this blog so, you know, sorry about that guys! (I promise I’ll start using the Cambridge address from now on, OK?)