It was really hot that week. I remember the weather with the kind of clarity that comes with being a final year student living in a flat overlooking a park, watching people play frisbee, drink lager and loll about in the sunshine while I studied for my finals and wished plagues of pollen and midges upon them. Bastards.
It was the second election I’d voted in, but the first I’d paid much attention to. In 1992, I’d been living in the Tory-for-ever-and-ever constituency of Kensington and Chelsea. I sent in my vote in a tatty envelope from Mexico - taking part because I could, and not because I thought my vote would make any difference whatsoever. I voted Labour, a gut instinct grounded in a good socialist upbringing and a childhood under Thatcher, voting without knowing anything about policies or parties or personalities, voting in relief - not for, but against. As predicted, Douglas Fishburne (con) comfortably held on to his seat. The Tories held on to the country. And 6,000 miles away, I held on to a bottle of tequila and shrugged.
This was how elections worked, in my experience of watching parents come home from the polls, the results sliding in throughout the night - you voted, you lost, you carried on. 1979. 1984. 1988. The polls slid by, leaving us blue in their wake.
The only thing which made election day remarkable during the long decade under the Iron Lady was the possibility of a day off school as it became a polling station. For the pre-pubescent mind, a day of glorious nothing every four years and a handful of Baker Days seemed just reward for sour milk at playtime and no textbooks.
By 1997, my dwindling grant and hefty student loan convinced me that I deserved a little more from my government than a day in the sunshine. I paid attention to politics for the first time, bizarrely understanding it via my studies of Latin American political systems over the last 200 years. I reasoned that if I could figure out the mess and dishonesty and backstabbing of Chilean politics in the seventies, I could probably get my head around our own systems of government. Same difference, sort of, only less bloodshed.
I wasn’t registered to vote in Liverpool, where I was a student. So on polling day, I packed a bag full of revision textbooks and a walkman and set off on a train to the Peak District, where my vote was registered for various reasons. On the way over, I sucked up as much knowledge as I could about Sociolinguistics. I cast my vote at the town hall, turned around and got on the next train back to Liverpool, without even stopping at my mum’s cottage to say hello. On the way back to uni, I studied for my Quechua oral exam, the next morning, conjugating verbs about weaving and digging potatoes.
When I got back to Liverpool, I didn’t go home. It was five in the afternoon, and I headed straight for the 24 hour computer lab on Brownlow Hill, at the heart of the university, to write the last essays of my undergraduate career - one about Chilean Socialism 1972-1979 and another about the influence of US politics on Latin American economies in the last thirty years. The way I’ve always written essays is to think for a long time - thinking is an active verb, though, and includes reading, bookmarking stuff and jotting things down - and then to blitz the essay the night before it’s due in, because I need the discipline of a deadline to get things done. I set myself up in the computer lab with a stack of books, a walkman playing Faure’s Requiem and Ravel’s Pavane on a loop, spare batteries and a packet of mints, and got to work.
By midnight I was well under steam, and had reverted to the Meg-zone - writing two essays simultaneously in adjacent documents, flipping between the two periodically, raising arguments from one to the other, cross referencing bibliographies and quotes. I’ve always been a multi-tasker, and seldom does it show better than when the pressure’s on to produce. The third window I had open was a Netscape browser, with which I browsed the labour and bbc news sites for updates on the election. News was slow to come to the web.
By two a.m., most people had left the computer lab, and those that remained were either looking at porn or hastily assembling final essays, like me. Or possibly both. I heard a cry go up from the far end of the room, as someone shouted “Portillo’s gone!”, and I rushed to check the browser. Throughout the night, seats were won and lost, and I sorted out the economic difficulties of the southern cone to the tune of a requiem.
When it started to get light, at around half four, I put the closing full stop on both essays, ran spell checker and word count for the last time and hit print.
Emerging into a misty Liverpool dawn just as the sun was warming the sky, I walked slowly home, tired and wired. As I passed through Toxteth, I could hear the sounds of dying revelry in the morning light - people weaving drunkenly out of house parties, as election coverage came to a close. A man with rum on his breath, broad and bulky, accosted me by Princes Gate -
“Have you heard? Have you heard?” he questioned excitedly, “They’ve fucking gone, Labour’s in!”
He whooped joyfully, clapped me on the back with some force, and his drunken grin meandered across his face, eyes struggling to focus in the bright morning light. He wandered off towards the park, and I went home to sleep.
His confirmation of the result, along with the brightness of the morning and the anticipated heat of the day somehow made it seem real, more real than the official web updates, just hours before. Everything seemed more real, more involved, more personal. My country; my election; my vote.
After only a few hours sleep, I trundled back to the university to hand in the essays and complete my Quechua Oral. I didn’t speak about my prepared topic of potatoes and poncho weaving. I spoke about celebration in the Andes, about parties and people.
If you have a vote, please use it.
