It’s strange, isn’t it, polling day? The most important day of all, and it all goes very, very quiet. Not at the polling stations, obviously. But that great cacophonous cocktail of the campaign trail, the news, blogs and everything else is like a Midwest American ghost town after a local gang fight a hundred years ago killed everyone in the surrounding area. All you can hear is the distant echo of a Keane song.
So far today, I’ve had group emails from Gordon Brown and David Cameron — the latter by both text (how did he get my number, I ask you — how?? I definitely never gave my digits to Cambo, swear on my life) and email. Both ardently encouraged me to vote. For them.
But it’s not the same. The absence of craggy Gordon, fleshy Dave and grinning Nick from their odysseys around the country is rather deflating. It had become a strangely comforting part of the day, checking on where they’d all popped up and who they were mercilessly patronising now.
I have to admit it, I miss the guff. Have we had the last mention of “change”, “real change” and “lasting change”? Will we ever see Gordon awkwardly clap a voter on the back again, or say to an unsuspecting child something like “You’ve got arms” by way of small talk? Will Cambo, once and for all, roll down those sleeves?
Obviously it will all get very exciting again later, and tomorrow, and perhaps onwards and for ever more, if we are whirling around in electoral confusion and any intense “horse-trading” gets under way. (On that note, what a brilliant bit of guff that is — using a metaphor that must date from around 1824 to scare the masses off a hung parliament. It had the opposite effect on me, I’ll have you know: I can’t wait to see a spot of horse-trading in the flesh. It can’t be worse than hunting, after all.)
But for now, in the words of that great pundit, Björk — it’s oh so quiet.
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