Telling observations

I spent several hours telling yesterday.

• The Conservative ground game was a shambles. Early in my morning session the Conservative teller started fretting about his replacement not having shown up; eventually he abandoned his post for a while to retrieve his wife who’d also been telling elsewhere. The story was the same in the afternoon except the gentleman concerned (who had come from south London to help out) didn't have his own transport and had been stuck there all afternoon.
• Labour were the most in evidence on the streets locally, but (at least based on my own experience) the Lib Dems were most efficient at turning up on time to relieve tellers.
• Tellers from other parties make good “single-serving friends”. The morning’s Conservative teller had been around the world a bit and was interested to chat to.
• The polling station staff wouldn't let us into the lobby (unlike in previous years; I think they had a broader interpretation of which bit of the building was technically the polling station). Lots of voters remarked on this sympathetically (to us), especially when it was raining!