A thistle at the final whistle
Sorry about the title. Crap isn’t it? I was going to go with “What a load of Ballots” but that was even worse. Suggestions for anything better most welcome.
Anyway, I just can’t let Thursday go past without a wee commemorative blogette about the Scottish Elections. I’m a Nationalist so let’s just get that out of the way first. Yes, yes, I know lots of people hate us, but hey ho, we’ve won (kinda) so let’s try and be friends. If you want to comment on my politics then that’s your prerogative but you won’t change me, so bear that in mind.
So, colours nailed to the mast I can go on. Fourteen memories of the day:
- That wonderful moment that Tommy Sheridan lost his seat and his poor wife grinned her arse off in the same Tammy Wynette way she’s been doing over the last eighteen months. Guess now he’ll have to ask for a job at that tanning salon he’s been using, and go the other side of the counter.
- Jack McConnell not appearing til late at night after he’d had a good greet. He’s a former maths teacher, you know. Maybe he’ll come back to education one day and then try and do his job whilst filling out the paperwork his party have foisted on us in the name of “Education, Education, Education”.
- Lib Dems coquettishly leading the two leading parties on, but trying to play hard to get. Chase me! Chase me! What a shower. Their UK Parliamentary leader does have the coolest name, I’ll give him that. Ming- that’s just genius.
- Alec being all presidential. How many times has he woken up from that dream? I nearly wept. Yes, yes, I know he’s a smug git but he’s our smug git.
- My mum phoning me about 6.30pm and squealing high pitched, “We’ve won! We’ve won!”
- Surfing the various Scots blogs and laughing at the way everyone celebrated. My personal favourite was “Get it up ye, Jack McConnell”
- The way Scotland was the first headline in the
UK national news all day for a good reason. - The way both John and I made the kids watch the telly at 6.45 telling them they were “Watching History”. They are 9 and 4, what do we really think they got out of that?
- My mother in law telling me she voted for the Christian Alliance Nutjob Party. I told her Jesus might be upset with her. No, of course I didn’t. But it would have been funny, I think.
- Watching the seats go up all day. Then that final wee flurry at the end.
- Those bloody ballot papers. But then again…they weren’t that hard to figure out. Maybe an inability to fill out a ballot paper properly should disqualify one from voting anyway. A kind of election natural selection.
- An unionist (probably Scottish) getting a bit angry with me when I posted on the Guardian forum inviting all English who wanted to emigrate to a peace loving Scotland that had no interests in sending their boys to get killed in Iraq. I figured it was only polite and I meant it most sincerely but he called me lots of big words I didn’t understand and got awful hot under the collar.
- Phoning my brother who was coming up from his home in
London to tell him that he would only be allowed back in if he could prove he is Scottish. We offered him a surefire test involving a football. If he failed the football skills challenge, he was allowed back in. - Brother’s
Essex girlfriend was sorted as she does one of the best Proclaimers impersonations I have ever seen. Honorary status awarded, goes without saying.
So there are my election day memories. But what happens next though, eh?
