Successful Polling Day in Eynesbury and theatrical opening night with Wiggly as I organised the volunteers.
I was awake very early with my itching and decided that I might as well get up and be useful rather than scratch in bed and make my rash worse.
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Despite this, there was no doubt that the condition was improving even if it still had a long way to go.
I got up, washed and shaved and then took Sam for a very early walk as his main exercise for the day. Also packed up my things into the car and travel bag; aiming to only have to come back for Sam and his bowl/leads etc later on.
Time to drop of my case and equipment at Luke Street and then on to the garage to fill up with petrol and to drive through the car wash in preparation for polling day.
I went over to Ernulf to set Mike Clarke up as the first teller for the day and then got back to the committee room to set up the polling day computer files on Wiggly's machine.
The organisation gradually cranked into action as first the early morning leaflets had been completed by others and then the rest of the team started arriving one at a time.
I had trouble throughout the day getting the team to take on the urgency of the task and many of my colleagues seemed to be just going through the motions.
I did our normal trick of first knocking up Our Pensioners and this took most of the morning. Then we knocked up all of our supporters in turn but, though I had four knockers-up out for most of the day, this sank to two at teatime and I had to push like anything to get anywhere near the number of workers we needed for the evening session.
I did actually get up to around eleven people out at one stage which may have sounded a lot but many of them were paired up without cars and we had over 1300 supporters to visit and a huge electorate of 6000.
The other problem was a lack of runners getting the numbers back quickly enough and in al it was a difficult task. We also had the coincidence of a number of other things to distract our key plaers. There was the fact that Wiggly had her opening night of her play and to leave in late-afternoon.
Sally had her parents flying of to Australia that day with Brian needing the car to take them to the airport. Chris Howes had an operation at noon but was available early and came back later with his eye patched and arm in a sling but still did some running for numbers.
As the evening drew to a close, we knew we had only got out about a third of our vote and around a fifth of the total electorate turned out in all which was a pitiful number. Many of our people came back reporting the total apathy of the electors, including quite a few of our supporters who were seen sitting in front of the TV and not even answering the door.
As 9.00pm drew near, our knockers-up dribbled back tired and frustrated by the day with their tales of woe and then we all went up to the count to see the result. I used my supply of toiletries and a change of clothes to smarten up and then joined the others as the slow task of counting such ballot papers, seventeen names long, commenced.
This took ages to do and I was struggling to get my counting agents involved in a complex task. Wiggly telephoned having had a successful first night and I got her to drive back in time to se the last counting taking place and to hear the declaration of the result.
I got her to make the speech of thanks as the Liberal Democrats had gained three seats and held hers with the largest vote going to her. The normal post-election tradition of pasting up the flagboards with the result and then after I had returned home and crept in to collect Sam and his stuff, I went home and to bed with Wiggly.
Despite my condition and our tiredness, we made love enthusiastically and then dropped soundly to sleep to get the best rest I had managed to achieve in many days. This at the end of a very successful day indeed.