I love to vote

I've had a lovely day today. The sun always shines on election day.

Started off being late for work as spent far too long discussing the concept of 'family' with my not-next-of-kin-as-we-aren't-married. I cried first, so he won that one, but I got to wear the special green cardigan so we were quits.

Ticked away the moments that made up a dull day, but I did get to lie in the sun and discuss my thoughts for the future with a cool Yorkshirewoman. Felt glad that multiculturalism allows cross-Pennine bonding from time to time.

Went to plumbing. I was a bit scared, because Plumbing S is in Wales this week (long story) so I was facing an unassisted guttering/downpipe assessment. We did hers last week, so I pretty much knew what to do, but it's a lot harder when you're up a ladder on your own with no one to pick up the screws you drop or hand you the spirit level.

I swore a lot, but I did get it passed and signed off, and then I went to vote. How I love voting. I know there are places where the B *spit* N *spit* P are tippy tappying it out with non mutants, and places (the same places?) where they are sufficiently worried about electoral fraud and intimidation to assign police officers to polling stations, but East Oxford is neither kind of place.

Here you roll up to a sports hall which smells of feet and has badly photocopied signs directing you in. The ballot box is balanced on some discarded gymnastics equipment, there are two women with long plaits dishing out the ballot papers and two rickety booths providing near zero privacy. But we are mostly voting Green here, so what's to hide?

The queue featured tall skinny Africans, a gay Scottish couple and various members of an Asian family. I gave thanks as always a) to the general pantheon for creating such a splendidly British example of understated representative democracy and b) to the suffragettes for making sure I could take part in it.

joella