Sebastian is from Poland. He paints posh homes for a pittance, but he doesn't like to complain. We are in a friend's kitchen on the day of the election, both involved in tasks that we loathe and, as it turns out, that we are not very good at. With me pureeing potato for home-made baby food in one corner, and Seb blobbing paint on the skirting boards in the other, we work diligently to the droning sound of Radio 4's Today programme.

Nothing annoys Seb more than Radio 4 and, even with his broken English, he has learnt to loathe John Humphrys's style of interviewing. "I don't understand him," he says, fiddling with the wonky extractor fan as Humphrys annoys another guest. "What point of world interest is he making?"

This starts us off on the subject of pet hates, and our compare-and-contrast of betes noires becomes a perfect way to pass the time.

We both hate pigeons ("Cook 'em or cull 'em"), fast food and Steps. Seb also hates MTV ("Teenagers don't respect girls in bikinis - nice bodies, though"). I can't help thinking that if only Ann Widdecombe met more illegal immigrants from eastern Europe, she might find she shares many of their village-life views.

We've done musical tastes, foods and fashions.

Then I say: "What I really, really hate is not going on holiday."

He looks at me for a long while in silence. Then he shoots back with "I hate those who think they are poor when they are rich to me".

I realise I have gone too far, and try to placate him with that symbol of English friendship, a cup of tea. "Fucking tea," he sighs.

After several weeks chit-chatting, our little relationship looks doomed to end on a bad note. Then I have a stroke of genius: there is one universal pet hate that crosses borders and cultures from Tehran to Tibet. "I hate . . . Americans?" I offer tentatively.

"Aaah, yes!" Seb grins. "Fucking Coca-Cola is destroying my country. Everywhere you look, McDonald's, MT-fucking-V. The kids have no values any more." As he swept up and prepared to go back to the showroom where he sleeps each night, I mourned the sad demise of British socialism. Rearing up, he looked at me coldly and warned: "Be very careful what you say, Lauren. Communism is even worse than McDonald's. I should know."

I keep remembering my Polish friend's dictum during election night. For most of it, I'm at the BBC's party in White City, where Greg Dyke seems the only one truly thrilled by the goings-on; the rest of the great and the good assembled in west London merely stare blankly as the words "Labour Hold" flash on to a megascreen for hours on end. By 2am, I had put the entire event behind me and was drinking absinthe in the Groucho with "Ben", an ex-adviser to Tony Blair.

Predictably, his mobile phone went off as we were downing our poison. Grasping for it with all the urgency of an addict fixing his next "hit", Ben listened to a message. He went pale, and the hand holding the mobile dropped to his lap. He looked at me with a total, terrified blankness. "Oh my God," he said. My mind filled with terrifying images. Perhaps a bomb had gone off at Millbank. Or Blair's plane had crashed. Or maybe Widdecombe's shirt had fallen open to the waist as she thanked her constituents.

"Mandelson's lost . . ." he said in a monotone. The adrenalin burst into my veins, my heart began to race. Here, at last, was the thrill of democracy. The people had spoken, they had blacked new Labour's eye, shown the Third Way a different way, broken free from their electoral chains. Ben bravely lifted his phone and listened to the rest of his voicemail as my imagination ran amok. "Oh, sorry," he said with quiet relief. "I didn't hear the rest. Mandelson's lost . . . it. Apparently, he freaked out making his speech." My heartbeat steadied and bored disappointment set in once more.

It would have been good, though, wouldn't it?

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