Voting fraud

Tonight I went to a training session for my work with the Plice Commshherner Elecshions on Thursday. I'm Presiding Officer at one polling station, working 6am-10.30pm, then I'm back as a counting assistant in our breeze-blocked "leisure" centre at 9am to count what is predicted to be meagre votes. Turnout will be very low so it won't be as exhausting as the General Election, where I was occasionally delerious whilst lick-finger flicking hallucinogenically through the voting papers.

In a Gillow-pannelled room in our beautiful, marble and granite Town Hall, a woman took us through the procedures. I nodded and asked questions and she ended up addressing some of her talk to me. I've always been interested in psephology since reading David Butler's books about the General Elections.

I wondered at her detailed, unscripted knowledge of election procedure, trying to take in every detail and knowing that I've got to appear knowledgeable and confident early on Thursday morning to my poll clerks.

In night-long mental conversations with myself, I am often wracked with worry about whether a slight financial irregularity in my affairs will be discovered. One party worries over the details of my court case appearing in the local paper, while the other urges me to sleep, pointing out that I can't do anything whilst in bed. They argue it out all night in my head. In the morning, I tense with an unfamiliar sound of a car or heels in the street below.

The worry has become a higher cost to me than its financial advantage, and I've decided to stop it, from today. The decision is as liberating as its consequences will be practically difficult to live with.

I went to the jobcentre and found one of the very few jobs that I would actually like to do that crop up round here--part-time car park attendant. Let a few cars in and spend the rest of the time reading.

My call was answered by an inarticulate but well-meaning man who went through some preliminaries. "What attracts you to the job?" Several things actually, although I didn't mention avoiding a shameful court case, and being able to crack on with Moll Flanders. The couple next to me earwigged. I went down the pub and worked out a sheet of figures about what this will all mean financially.

The inescapable conclusion is that I will have to cut back on my drinking. "You're only an alcoholic if you can't afford it," and I can't. From now on it's more placcy cider and the four quid Stowells red from the corner shop than the delicious complexities of twenty quid wine club wine from South Africa and Italy. I spend an insupportable amount on drink.