East count: "This is the best example of the need for electronic voting", pronounced FF's Donie Cassidy, as The Irish Times discreetly checked her clothes for buttercups, daisies, cowslips, the kind of stuff that comes with monitoring the Euro elections in the East.
In the past couple of days as the counts roared on all over Europe, we here in Pudden Hill Activity Centre (ironically) fell into a kind of lethargy, what with the remarkable, eh, thoroughness of the count process.
Early on, we faced a choice : a bloody revolution to try and speed the counting, a desperate assault on the under-performing tallymen or bring on the picnic rugs.
As returning officer Ms Maire Teahan terrifies the wits out of the media and the tallymen are a threatened species anyway, we naturally chose the lolling in the grass option.
By the time Donie pitched up from his Castlepollard fastness to foment unrest, we had drifted into an altogether more gentle universe.
The Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey, was philosophical enough for the planet and therefore most unlikely to disturb our Zen-like aura. He remembered the euphoria of '77, the firestorm of the locals in '79 (bin strikes, postal strikes), the Cavan local elections two terms ago when five pothole candidates were elected councillors. Where are the potholes now, he asked serenely? More pertinently, where are the councillors? It helps to have perspective in Pudden Hill.
Justin Barrett maintained his perspective too. While his wife Bernadette and their small son gambolled in the grass, he looked a tad weary as this most thorough of counts broke for lunch, broke for tea (not like the old days when a ham sandwich was devoured at the tables and was good enough for them) and left poor Justin hanging for the result of the distribution of the four lowest pollers. "I can go home then", he said a bit sadly, if realistically. Has he a plan, asked The Irish Times sympathetically? "Well, the plan required 6 per cent", he said mysteriously, "and we only got 2½. But there are over 10,000 people out there relying on us in Leinster so we'll have to keep going". You've been warned.
After this mighty effort, we repaired to the grass again, before engaging in a rather animated discussion with separate elements of the McGuinness and Doyle camps as to whether their mighty result was a stroke of genius or the fluke of all flukes.
The Doyle side thought fluke - "we did very well with no organisation behind us", ventured one, intimating that the supposedly media-inspired hype had more substance to it than heretofore acknowledged. As to the role played by Avril's flashing lights and newspaper inserts, we can never know only that Mairead had far bigger billboards and five times more posters, if you believe the Doylers. Suffice to say that McGuinness is said to have taken 12,000 to 15,000 votes out of Wexford.
We then took tea. Life was meandering along nicely until suddenly at 9.37, a frightful buzz of activity erupted on the RTÉ side of the hall. After two days of long absence, Avril Herself had arrived to grace the scene. She proceeded through a phalanx of tearful supporters - "oh we thought she was gone yesterday", hugging and kissing before stopping short, eyeing up The Irish Times and jokily (we think) instructing this quivering reporter to "rewrite" yesterday's little stab at colour.
Meanwhile, she tended her band, left yearning for the good news for so long. Even as Peter Cassells murmured, "It's yours, Avril" and she told him he'd have made an "excellent MEP", she was trying to calm the straining fans : "We're not there yet We're not there yet It's premature. I've seen too much of this".
We jogged along to keep up, pausing only to watch, fascinated, as young Oliver Callan from Today FM and his microphone dared to step forward for a word. "Who are you?", she demanded. "You don't do that without introducing yourself. Be professional".
Afterwards, we swore blind that had we all not been on deadline, we would have taken a stand. Shame, that. "We've been waiting a long time for you", said Oliver, undaunted. "Well, there wasn't a story up to now".
Had she sent congratulations to Mairead? "I texted congratulations to Mairead McGuinness - as I did to all our candidates", she parried.
Whereupon the same Ms McGuinness loped into the centre, aglow in a white suit, a veritable Martin Bell come to Pudden Hall. A little of the Zen-like aura returned but only a little.