Yesterday

Yesterday turned out to be a perfect spring day - warm and sunny with just a very gentle breeze. Today by contract it has turned a lot colder. Yesterday was also the day of our general election.

At the Lions' dinner meeting on Wednesday, two of the members admitted - no, not admitted: that sounds as though they had misbehaved in some way - anyway, two members said that they intended staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning to hear the early results. That's not something I have ever done and cannot imagine ever being sufficiently interested to do. The morning news programmes are soon enough for me. But by 11.30, when the first two results had been announced, I had almost changed my mind. Those first two results were for strongly held Labour constituencies but both of them showed a dramatic swing to the right, one nearly 9% and the other over 11%. This could get interesting, I thought. Then there was the news that hundreds of people had been unable to vote. They had been queuing to get into their polling stations in various cities across the country but had been unable to do so before the doors were closed at 10.00pm. There was a suggestion that, if the result in any of those constituencies is very close, a legal challenge might be made. Even more interesting, but still not interesting enough and I went to bed. This morning I discover that we have a hung Parliament, although the Conservative party have won the greatest number of seats. I learn that, under the rules for a hung Parliament, the incumbent Prime Minister (who is Labour) has the first opportunity to try to form a government. Only if he is unable to do so does the leader of the party with the most seats have his chance. So there is still a possibility that Gordon Brown will continue to live at No 10.

Closer to home, my constituency has a Green MP. No, that's not right, although the mind boggles at the thought of the House of Commons peopled by little green men and women. Would we notice the difference, I ask myself. Anyway, our new MP is a member of the Green party, their first and only MP.

And so to my predictions. I forecast that the new MP for Brighton Kemp Town would be called Simon, and he is - Simon Kirby. The MP for Brighton Pavilion, I said, would be a woman, and I was correct.

Confession time. The two leading contenders in Kemp Town have the same Christian name while in Pavilion, all three main parties and the Green party fielded a woman as their candidate. So there was no crystal ball gazing or tea leaf reading involved.