The result, polling day and the count



My vote. My thanks to the other 812 people who voted for me.



John Holwell LD, 463; Nicola Morrison L 154, John Woodman C, 813.

So that's a win then. To show how in touch I was with what was going on, when I finished on polling day I had worked out that I couldn't possibly win. So I'm as surprised as anyone.

Polling day is a strange day if you're a candidate. Apart from voting, there's a not a lot you can do yet you sort of feel obliged to do stuff. I voted; I was first there at Beadnell and thanks to a couple of proxy votes took an early commanding lead of three. I visited the other polling stations a couple of times during the day, and noted a low count. We had "tellers" at Seahouses and Belford recording who had voted, the idea being that we could then chase potential supporters who hadn't voted. In Seahouses in particular this process sometimes turned the voting into a village event with people catching up with each other. Democracy has a purpose. Towards the end of the day we took stock, phoned a few people and sat back and wondered what had happened; as I said eralier I looked at the information and assumed it wasn't possible.

So the next day I had rehearsed my gracious losers speech by the time I got to the count, in the Willowburn sports centre in Alnwick. People told me I had won: before they count they open the boxes and check the numbers of votes actually tally, and when they do that you get a good idea of who is doing well or whether its close. And when they actually counted (in batches of 25, but unlike in 2008 they didn't use coloured pegs to indicate the party to collate the 25s, they just used paperclips) it was obvious I had won as the batches of 25 piled up. We had a quick discussion about the few spoilt ballot papers (a couple of blanks, a couple of Wot! no UKIP! ones) and then the announcement. I sensed some surprise at my victory - Bamburgh having been traditionally Lib Demn for so many years. A couple of journalists asked for a quote: I thanked the people who had voted for me, I thanked Pat Scott for looking after the Division for many years and wished her a good retirement and lastly I dedicated my victory to one of the world's good guys, Vin Clerkin, whose funeral I also went to on polling day.

And that was that. Except there was some excitement: there was one vote between two of the candidates in one of the Divisons, and that vote was a ballot paper where the voter had written a  comment and a mark by one of the candidates, rather than just a cross. This caused dissent and a number of recounts.