Election? Enough, already
My solution to early onset election fatigue: calm your nerves by listening to me reading your favourite children's stories
It is just possible, I suppose, that with two more weeks still to go, you are heartily sick of the election.
In which case, even though I am a life-long fan of elections, I have something that might help you to retain your sanity.
Perhaps you remember the grim, far-off days of the Covid pandemic when schools and offices were closed, and we were ordered to forgo all social interactions. Life as we knew it came to a virtual standstill.
My way of dealing with that zombie-like world in which we were all forced to live was to record some of my favourite children’s stories and make them available online, with me reading them.
They would, I hoped, help listeners through the crisis by reminding them of their childhoods, when life was full of magic and excitement, with parents reading aloud to them as they snuggled under the blankets, or playing cassette recordings on endless car journeys.
I called these podcasts simply Robin Lustig Reading Stories. Among them were Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories (remember How The Elephant Got Its Trunk?), The Wind in the Willows, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Secret Garden and The Railway Children. I even wrote a couple of stories myself.
Now, I have linked to the entire archive from my Substack feed. More than eighty bitesize chunks, ideal for calming your heart-rate after yet another election debate or phone-in programme, with politicians doing what they so love to do: making endless promises which they know — and we know — they will find it very hard to keep.
You can access this treasure trove wherever you usually find your podcasts — but there is, I’m afraid just one snag. The stories will be available only if you have taken out a paid subscription to my Substack feed. It won’t break the bank: you can pay either monthly at £5 per month, or annually at £50 per year.
I hope you enjoy them — but I also hope you’ll still want to read my thoughts on the election and its aftermath. There must surely be room in your life for both.