Helping out for the Election

 I was phoned up a few days ago by a lovely lady from the Green Party who asked if I'd like to volunteer to help on election day.  They think Ellie Chowns has a good chance of winning in North Herefordshire, so they were asking people from surrounding constituencies to go there, to concentrate their efforts.

I said I would help if I could get there - buses are always a problem - but they found someone else from the Brecon and Radnor constituency who was going to help, and I was able to get a lift with him and his wife.  We were sent to Weobley, where bundles of leaflets were waiting for us.  They even gave out wooden spatulas to poke the leaflets through difficult letter boxes.  I was a bit dubious about that at first, but it turned out to be really useful!

The husband and wife team went out around the rural area, since the instructions said that it should be done in pairs, and I went off to Dilwyn with a chap from Wrexham.  We each did half the village.  I've never seen so many Green posters on display before!

I met some lovely people on the doorstep, and only one lady refused a leaflet.  "I'm neutral," she said.  "I'm a Jehovah's Witness.  I'm waiting for God's Kingdom."

Back at the hub in Weobley I waited for my lift to return, and chatted with another couple of people who had come down from Chester.  It was all very well organised, and by the time I left leafletting had been replaced by the volunteers who were going round knocking on doors to see if people had voted yet.  The couple who were hosting the hub provided teas, coffees and a snack lunch, and they were also baking biscuits for an allotment event on Saturday.

They arrived with an injured hedgehog that they'd rescued from the side of the road, so our journey home was diverted to Kington vets, so they could drop it off there.  Somehow it seemed like a stereotypically Green thing to do!

After that, I went to cast my own vote, and saw quite a few familiar faces in the queue to the polling station.  The chap who was telling outside the polling station admired my suffragette badges (I always wear them on election days) and said what a pity it was that some women he knew wouldn't vote, after all the trouble the suffragettes went to.

This evening I shall be sitting down with a glass of wine and the radio into the night to see what the results are.  It should be an interesting night.