Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An' I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An' stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.
It’s Sunday morning.
At college.
Counting.
Watching.
A frosty sun shines over the campus bathing it in a silvery orange glow.
There is a strangeness about the people who are walking on campus this morning. The demographic is not hipster chic. It’s dark suit and notebook chic. Grand Sunday dress and heels chic. It’s tired hack in best hack-chic, holding laptops, devices.
People who stumbled home the night before are back. Re-energised to meet the day. Counters relieved that they hadn’t to go through the night. Hacks relieved that they got the information out while they had some of their senses about them.
There is an air of renewed energy about them this morning as they prepare to kick off again
A returning officer and her team relieved to have got this far without any major issue to derail the slow but constant progress of a count that is always destined to be one of the country’s longest.
Across the contry, thousands of people who have attended counts and worked at counts are waking up bleary-eyed. Most are in locations less salubrious that we are this morning.
How fortunate we are to have such a facility as the Bailey Allen Hall at NUI Galway.
Yet maybe it is too salubrious. That if we were in less comfortable surroundings, we might be determined to get the job done quicker and get home.
There is a modernity about the Bailey Allen Hall that differs it from the majority of count centres throughout the country. The facilities are good. There’s a bar serving food, drink.
And so the counting resumes.
How long will it go on is anybody’s guess. At some stage we wil be reduced to five candidates. We have an idea already who some of them are. O Cuiv and Grealish are home and dry. Kyne should be, but the rest is up for grabs. There will be drama and disappointment.
Teers and cheers and jeers.
An end is in sight. However nobody can ever foretell what tightness the transfers will bring. What possibilities it will throw up.
There is a strange feeling too that after all this counting, there is no way in knowing what shape of Government these candidates will line up in. Will we be back here before the end of the year doing it all over again? And will the vanquished come back for another go?
So many questions. So many twists and turns to be explored.
So many adventrous little votes winding their way down the ballot paper making unlikely leaps from candidate to candidate, all the time casting the spell that creates the stories we will bring you today.
Sit back and enjoy.
But first…. coffee.
