For the last ten plus years I've been busy hating the government. In both public and private. In organised forums and in spontaneous outbursts. In solo and four-part harmony.

In prose, poetry, and pictorial commentary - I've been busily hating-away.

Then, all of a sudden, whhhhoooooooossssssshhhhhhhhhh. I was transported to a different dimension. Planet Kevin.

Subtly but profoundly the whole world is altered. And it sure takes some getting used to. I keep stumbling against the emotional furniture and getting bruised.

Okay? So now blue is red and red is blue. Everthing else is green. Left in power. Right in retreat. Government good - opposition bad.  I can get my head around the big things (if I think real hard and real carefully) but adjusting to the everyday littler things is proving a tad more difficult.

Like Pavlov's puppies my pack of emotions are all preconditioned to salivate at the sound of the bell. The phrase "Today the Prime Minister..." still makes me wince, and when I hear "the opposition..." my initial instinct is to roll over to get a scritch on the tummy. You might laugh, but for a political animal a fundamental thing like knowing when to run is pretty important.

And re-learning when I should be listening is proving a total bitch. Even embarrassing. A couple of times during the last week I have had to sheepishly pull my fingers from my ears, apologise, and ask who the hell I'm talking to and what the hell are we taking about. Monty Python knows nothing!

The broadsheets (printed on faintly greenish paper) are full of impotent right-wing factions each trying to be more pathetic than the next.

Fr'crissakes!  Our environment Minister is a Rock Star? I gotta sit down. Carefully.

Also - left-wing (now centre) trigger words like ‘Minister' or ‘Treasurer' still cause almost all my friends to quickly duck beneath a desk before they realise it's just me, waiting, with a beer in hand (ice-cold from the new cabinet). And smiling. That's another thing.

Smiling! Yes it is disgusting! I don't care what the new fashion might dictate, but on my planet smiling and politics just don't mix. It's considered sort of icky.

Politics is all about, is supposed to be, a hard emotional slog. Wearing a humanitarian hair shirt, a frown, and a quite comfy middle-class crown of thorns. It might embarrass some of the younger generation but I'm simply too old to change! Planet Kevin be damned.

Green is the new white. Social services are adequate and getting better. (Left hand entrances lead in, right hand out.) We all look forward to the news. The media don't know what's going on and are generally sceptical.....

It's exhausting having to think so hard and I'm a wee bit confused. And my face hurts from all this uncomfortable smiling.

I might make a nice cuppa and read the US papers! There's lot's of things to hate there.