A miscellany of thoughts from the day...

When I got to the polling station this morning I was directed as usual to a wooden booth with a stubby pencil attached by a piece of string and a drawing pin.... That was roughly two inches (five centimetres) of twine on a pencil about two and a half inches long, and pinned to the right hand edge of the booth.  Not terribly helpful if you are left-handed and actually want to pick up the pencil.  Don't tell anyone but I released it from the drawing pin!!

During the course of the day I was asked by two lots of people for directions to polling stations!  First was a couple who had read the name of the school but not the address, so had arrived outside the wrong site.  Fortunately when I explained where the school has now moved to, they were able to go and vote.  Then was a near neighbour who may or may not be in the same ward as me (strange situation where housing complex opens onto two streets in two different districts!) - she wanted to vote but had lost her card and assumed I would know.  I sent her to where I voted and hoped for the best.

Unusually, there has been lots of activity on blogs and social media about voting, reminding people to get out and do it, and then debating whether or not spoiling a ballot paper was a valid choice.  I've always been of the view that it is, but some argue that it isn't, merely taking up time for the sorters and counters.  Hmm.  Not entirely convinced - surely a substantial number of spoiled ballot papers would say something to someone?  I didn't spoil mine, by the way, I've only ever done that once and accidentally due to wrong instructions on a postal vote.

Quite what any of this really means, who knows.  I am encouraged that there may be a good turnout (though I have seen reports of scarily low turnouts (so far) at some Scottish polling stations) which will hopefully dilute the impact of extremists - time will tell.

As others have said elsewhere, there are still just over three hours to vote if you haven't yet done so...