The election is affecting my mental health – at least I'm not Dilyn the dog

Monday

My father died more than 20 years ago and I increasingly find that I think of him most on Remembrance Day rather than on his birthday or the anniversary of his death in January. He was 18 when the second world war started and 24 – the same age as my son is now – when it ended and he served in the Navy throughout, first in the north Atlantic, then in the Malta convoys and the Sicily landings and finally in the far east. And yet I have almost no details of his time in the war, because he would never discuss it. He would talk about the war in general, but whenever it became too personal he would close the conversation down. It was a part of him that was unreachable, a place he could not bear to revisit because it was still too painful, even 50 years later. It was only just before he died that he told my mother of his recurring nightmare of the time he had been ordered to sail through a sea of men who had been sunk, because to have stopped would have meant getting torpedoed as well. The closest thing I have to a record of his service career is a napkin ring on which he had engraved a list of all the ships in which he had sailed. I’ve started going through the archives in an attempt to piece together his war, but this gives little indication of the personal cost. The fear, the guilt and, yes, the moments of boredom. The records show that he was on HMS Quentin when it was sunk by German fighter planes after sinking a U-Boat and I assume it was for his actions in this engagement that he was awarded the DSC. But I don’t know for sure, as he never properly told me. All he would say was that he continued to man the guns as the boat was sinking. But as he was sunk twice, maybe it was another battle entirely. Remembrance Day is about more than just those who lost their lives in war. It’s also about those who spent a lifetime trying to recover from surviving a war.

Tuesday

It’s been 30 years since the Berlin Wall came down and I can still vividly remember watching it happen on the TV with tears running down my cheeks. People chipping away at the wall with hammers. People climbing over the wall. Complete strangers embracing each other. Families being reunited after nearly three decades apart. It was more than the liberation of a country, it was the liberation of a spirit. I had travelled to East Germany with my parents the previous year as my mother wanted to see where some of her family were buried. Her father was German and had escaped to the UK in the early 1930s. Nothing we experienced had given me the slightest hint that the Soviet block was within 12 months of collapse. We flew into West Berlin, had a meal and then walked through Checkpoint Charlie, one of the most genuinely disturbing moments of my life. You could almost physically feel yourself being watched throughout and I was conscious that one wrong move – no matter how innocent – could result in us being arrested and detained. Once in the East, it was like entering another world. Everything felt colourless. There were few shops, no advertising hoardings, little street lighting and only a handful of old Trabants pottering along the almost empty roads. During our three-day stay in East Berlin and Magdeburg, we spoke to almost no one. People sensed that we were an alien other and instinctively shied away from us. Anything beyond basic civilities was fraught with danger. Never have I been so happy to leave a country. The end of the wall felt like a moment of renewal, a symbol of hope. Thirty years on, it feels as if barriers are being rebuilt.

Wednesday

Harry and Meghan have been getting it in the neck yet again from Piers Morgan and the tabloid press. This time their crime against humanity is that they are apparently snubbing the Queen by not choosing to spend Christmas with her at Sandringham. As if this was anyone’s business but theirs. I’m sure the Queen’s not that put out, so why should others be so on her behalf. There’s no great matter of state at stake. Just think this through. Since when did it become a national emergency not to stay with your granny at Xmas? Most young people, assuming they are going to stay with anyone – I can still remember the sense of liberation my wife and I felt when we finally realised we didn’t have to go anywhere and were allowed to slob around in our own home – choose to stay with their parents. So if they have upset anyone it is Prince Charles. And in any case, shouldn’t the normal rules long since have been reversed with Charles having his 90-something-year-old-parents to stay at Highgrove rather than making them do all the entertaining in Norfolk? There’s also another convention with young couples that they take it in turns to stay with each other’s parents. Last year they went to Sandringham, so it’s only fair that this time round they stay with Meghan’s mum. Which is what they are doing. Things change when you have children. Things change again when you and they get older. This year will be the first Christmas ever without our daughter who will be staying with her in-laws at her new home in the US. We will miss her terribly. But being a parent means learning to live with loss. It’s the way things are. The way they are meant to be. So we’re just going to have to suck it up. As are the Queen and Prince Charles.

Thursday

The election continues to take its toll on my mental health. And, I suspect, that of the country. So far this week I have been out in London with the Lib Dems, in Blackpool with Labour, in Coventry with the Tories and in Hull with the Brexit party, and my over-riding impression is that the voters don’t really want any of the parties on offer. No one really believes Jo Swinson when she says she is going to be prime minister, hardcore Brexiters feel sold out by Nigel Farage, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t trusted, and even Conservative supporters admit that Boris Johnson is a liar. Six years ago, membership of the EU just wasn’t an issue apart from for a tiny minority of the country. Now Brexit has split the entire UK with no signs of anyone being able to heal the divisions. Politics has never felt so toxic or binary. I’ve always taken the view that the political sketch should be an equal opportunities column. A chance to satirise – and, on rare occasions, praise – politicians on all sides and to call out hypocrisy, lies and incompetence wherever I find it. Increasingly, though, I find that some readers expect me to be a cheerleader and to ignore anything that might be slightly problematic for the Labour party. This week, I observed that Corbyn seemed to have lost some of his campaigning edge of 2017 and that it wasn’t enough to be just remembered as the plucky underdog who did better than expected. Having great policies is pointless if you never get to implement them. Corbyn may have seen off three prime ministers, but the Tories would be more than happy for him to see off three more if it meant Labour staying out of office for another 10 years. But no one gets to take my vote or sketch for granted.

Friday

Spare a thought for Tory candidate Mims Davies. A while ago she wrote to her constituents in the marginal seat of Eastleigh, telling them that it was with deep sadness that she was standing down as their MP in order to spend more time with her children. Just this week, she has re-emerged from her family to win the nomination for the safe Conservative seat of Mid Sussex. Davies professed herself “profoundly shocked” to have been selected. Presumably her letter putting herself forward wrote itself. Eastleigh must be so proud of her. Many other constituencies have also had candidates forced on them by both the Tory and Labour high commands despite the local associations having wanted someone else. So against all the general shabbiness and backroom stitch-ups, it’s good to be able to honour one of the election’s unsung heroes. Step forward, Dilyn the Downing Street dog. Poor Dilyn has been taken out several times by Carrie Symonds on the campaign trail and each time he has looked thoroughly miserable. Photographed in Richmond with Zac Goldsmith, Dilyn couldn’t have appeared more desperate. “How could you take me out with a man who ran such a racist campaign for London mayor?” he barked. Out with Theodora Clarke, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s niece, in Stafford, Dilyn had to be restrained from running off, and on the train to Bristol he was pictured looking longingly out the window, begging someone to call the RSPCA and have him rehoused. Dilyn alone speaks truth to power.

Digested week digested: Onan the Barbarian

John Crace’s new book, Decline and Fail: Read in Case of Political Apocalypse, is published by Guardian Faber. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.