None of the above

"Look at this," said one of the hundred electors (a turnout in our ward of 9.9%) who came into the polling station. "This is what voting has come to in this country. There should be a policeman standing outside all day, we should be in a proper polling station, not a nursery, and you should be in a suit and tie."

I arrived at the polling station at 6.15am with the screens and the boxful of stationery and other paraphernalia, and started to set things up. The poll clerk arrived a little later. I was relieved that we got on and that he didn't seem to mind that as the senior member of staff there I was a good bit younger than him. You're spending sixteen hours with these people, with no breaks other than going to the loo.

It was chilly, with having to keep the door open, and ineffective heating that went off at 5pm. It was a very slow day, but not as slow as in the polling station at Bettws, Newport, where not a single voter turned up. My poll clerk started and finished a novel, and I almost finished Moll Flanders. At 10pm K--- started turning the place back into a nursery, while I did the paperwork. We took everything down to the leisure centre and got away by about 10.45. Wide awake on adrenaline, I had a couple in the Sun Hotel. A group of women were doing that screaming, over-laughing performance of female solidarity.

The hardest bit is always the morning after. Still stunned with the leftovers of curtailed sleep, I got back to the leisure centre for 8.30 where we had a training session on the Single Transferable Vote system.

Despite the fact that they'd only got away the previous night at midnight and had to be back at the leisure centre at 7am, the staff from the Council set high standards: good-natured, friendly and well-dressed, especially the Head of Flipcharts, my Council Crush, with her lovely slightly touseled dark blonde hair, wearing a silkily strokable creme blouse and straight grey trousers which perfectly almost covered her black kitten heels.

Our team made not a single mistake in the entire process, every complicated cross-matched stat coming out right first time. Nothing had to be recounted or opened again, and we were waiting for other less efficient tables to get it right. An excellent spoilt ballot did the rounds: someone had photoshopped the ballot paper, keeping to the same format as a normal one, but changing the pictures and names to Judge Dredd, Robocop, Dirty Harry, and Batman.

Lancashire's result was declared at 4.30 and I went back into town for a pint. Looking at myself in the pub's mirror, I was shocked at the gaunt, haggard face looking back at me.

I thoroughly enjoy working at the elections. It makes me feel involved with and sympathetic towards my Local Council. There's a cameraderie amongst the permanent and temporary staff, the representatives from the political parties. Blokey jokes, the same ones every year, keep spirits up. "Sleep? Don't be so soft!" "It's not hard--you've only got to count to twenty-five. A thousand times."

Raggedly-dressed young volunteers rushed about keenly with clipboards, making sure you're counting the votes correctly. Labour sent its contingent of busty, painted, fortysomething women aiming at glamour and missing. The Green Party and the Conservatives parody themselves. The LibDems were too embarrassed this year to show their faces, so we missed the grey-haired middleaged academic-looking women, all human rights and yoga.