Dank and chill, with repeated waves of diagonal rain. So unpleasant I had physically this morning to drag the dogs out for their walk: normally, I am towed helplessly in their wake. But it reminded me strongly of another summer day on the west side of Lewis, long ago. It was June , the weather was — if anything — even worse, and my mother had to take my grandmother out: by then, infirm and frail and pushing eighty, she seldom left the house and the operation was something on the scale of Hannibal crossing the Alps.
But it was the first direct election to the European Parliament. And the old lady was determined to vote. People will find themselves invited to church halls, lonely pubs, farm-shops and even boxing gyms to vote in the General Election. Women were not granted the franchise till , and only if they were at least thirty. It would be before we finally had full adult suffrage in this country and on equal terms — though it would be forty more years before the requisite age was dropped from 21 to eighteen.
There is something at once prosaic and reassuring about the retail- end of an election in these islands. My polling-place today happens to be the local bowling club. But, the length of the land, people will find themselves invited to church halls, lonely pubs, farm-shops, boxing gyms, even the odd stable — whatever has been identified as a convenient station, especially in the remote and rural.
On this occasion, I shall have to furnish photo-ID. My name will then be solemnly underscored on a list and I shall be directed to a little booth, with its stubby pencil Sellotaped to a length of austere string. Having made my cross, I shall slip my folded ballot into the box, pat said box, and depart with a faint half-smile.
It sounds so simple, but there are a lot of little rules under the all-embracing Representation of the People Act. You must not take any photographs within the polling-place. You must certainly not snap your completed ballot: oddly, as far as I can ascertain, this does not apply to postal votes.
