CAST your minds back, if you will, to roughly a month ago, when I spent a not uninteresting evening dashing around the streets of Byron Bay trying to find somewhere to watch the election debate and ended up illegally crammed into the corner of an unoccupied motel room making solemn promises to the night manager not to spray containers of UHT milk all over myself during fits of worm-based excitement.
I'm a self-confessed political dork, so any chance of po-faced nation-changing programming gets me reasonably jazzed in the pants area. I can even handle regular doses of Question Time, so long as there are white spirits on hand and a minder with a leather glove to slap me across the face should I start growing overly shrill during one of Bronwyn Bishop's interminable speeches.
Naturally I spent a fair amount of time working myself up for Saturday's "Australia Decides" 2007 Election special, though yet again I was faced with a quandary, and this time it was this: my inamorato's sister was getting married. In Castlemaine. And most significantly, there would be no television.
How does one solve such a conundrum without seeming like the rudest, most tunnel-visioned columnist since Piers Ackerman? I imagined myself with no small amount of horror tugging on the beautiful bride's dress during the service and requesting in a stage whisper that I be allowed to nick into the kitchen with the wait staff and watch Antony Green's magnificent mind-calculator at work between the readings and the exchange of the rings.
Ever-patient and angelic soul that she is, I'm certain she would have smiled indulgently and pointed me in the direction of a set rather than have me escorted from the building by men with walkie-talkies, but I didn't like to ruffle feathers regardless. It was Lucy's day, and I was to graciously accept the lack of televised vote-counting and get on with the task of remembering the names of all the guests and not getting so shickered on sparkling wine that I tried to stick my tongue in the celebrant's ear.
But then the text messages began. Fellow dorklings started reporting news of windy change; of unsettled Liberal MPs with pasted-on smiles, and of Julia Gillard barely managing to refrain herself from giving Nick Minchin the finger as results trickled in from faraway booths. I was helpless with desire to watch this all unfold, and when a wedding-goer whispered that he'd just got word that Kerry O'Brien had accidentally and smirkingly referred to the ALP as the ABC, I gave up any pretence of dancing to the band and hunted down the only set in the building.
