Respected, selected, call collected 

I can't ignore them any longer. I have to accept that they won’t go away if I simply refuse to admit they exist.

SWMBO would not disregard them. In fact, she has mentioned them several times recently.

No, she’s right – it’s high time I acknowledged the general election and the main players.

My politics tend to be confrontational. Not that I’m a member of some loony tunes party.

It’s just that if someone at a dinner party (remember them?) mouths off, or orrff in the case of the Tories, about some particular political persuasion or other, I’ll invariably take a contrary view.

So one minute I’m a red-in-the-bed Labourite, the next a true-blue.

I guess that’s just in my nature. I’m such a wind up merchant that I should have been a clockmaker.

It’s also partly down to my upbringing. Having been born in The Fatherland in those desperate post-war years which had seen aircraft keeping Berlin, the city of my birth, fed and watered, I heard too many horror stories about how politics can go wrong, especially if you have a view at odds with the ruling party.

I have done my duty on every available occasion for the past 40-plus years, apart from the time we lived in the Gulf and expats weren’t able to vote.

People who don’t exercise this basic democratic right are bonkers. I have heard associates say they don’t have the time. Rubbish. Polling stations are open 7am to 10pm and even the most dedicated worker should be able to fit in a five-minute trip to the local village hall or school.

I don’t even mind if people spoil their ballot paper – at least they have exercised their right to do so.

So, just two days to go. Who am I going to vote for? Well, that’s a secret. Democracy’s great, isn’t it.

In our constituency we have a candidate who is a neighbour, a decent man and someone I know would act in the interests of his constituents, should he be elected.

Unfortunately, he’s the right man but, in my opinion, in the wrong party.

So, my vote will go elsewhere. But at least I’ll be exercising my right.

PS: A bonus point to anyone who recognised that the headline on this piece is a line from Alice Cooper’s 1972 classic “Elected”.