“…normally when I go to vote its all quite jolly, but not today.”
That’s because this is far more important than the usual matters that are decided by voting. They are transient in nature and affect the electorate for only a fleeting moment. This decision is permanent (or so, we’re told. It remains to be seen what will happen in the event of the Brexiteers prevailing). This will determine whether those looking back in twenty or thirty years’ time will wonder what on earth the electorate were thinking in 2016 or whether they will applaud its common sense (and you can interpret that either way you choose).
For my part I voted at just after 8am on my way to get the Daily Telegraph. Mrs NJ had instructions that should I have died overnight she was not to contact the authorities but instead was to load my body into our wheelbarrow and take me to the polling station. Once there, she was to explain to the presiding officer that I was extremely drunk and could not stand but that I was still sufficiently compos mentis to cast my vote. I left it to her initiative to devise a way of her casting my vote without suspicion. As a fall back, should suspicions be aroused, I told her to make use of the “emergency proxy vote” procedure which is available until 5pm for people suffering a medical emergency which prevented them getting to the polling station. Only after one of those two options had been successfully exercised was she to report my death.