I have never voted. Not once. At first, in Yugoslavia, it was meaningless; then, in America for twenty years and for five in Britain, I was an alien without voting rights; in the end, it became a matter of principle. Voting is for the cattle. It is thus a surprise to feel an urge to vote for Ken Livingstone in the upcoming elections for the Mayor of London. As a resident of both Reading and London, I have the right to vote. And Ken is a maverick to my taste.

Addendum I (March 22, 2000)

I wrote this on my train ticket on my way from London to Reading, and I typed it into my computer a day later. Having typed the word “maverick,” I checked the substitutes in the Microsoft Word thesaurus. All the words that came up were very much to my taste: unaffiliated, independent, in opposition, radical, self-styled, contentious, aberrant, nonconformist, bohemian, eccentric, individualist, renegade, extremist. Yes, Ken is my man!

Addendum II (July 5, 2000)

There was a strategy meeting in my department in Reading the whole day yesterday. I was one of the very few people missing because I was at the Napier University in Edinburgh as an external examiner. I just learned from a colleague that a part of yesterday’s exercise was to establish where we were at present so as to determine where to go in the future and how to get there. Everyone was invited to contribute their thoughts in small groups, and everything my colleagues contributed was then posted on the black board for the whole department to see and discuss. Among other things pertaining to our present state, someone had contributed a funny little line about my humble self: “Ranko Bon—maverick.” As soon as I heard about this bit of petty cowardice I thought of Ken Livingstone, who had become the Mayor of London in the meanwhile. Red Ken, as he is affectionately called, would have been proud of me, too.