It was not like unsuccessful local body representatives all over the country who have swallowed their pride, sucked up their disappointment and spoken generously about their opponents.
It takes guts to stand for local elections. There is no place to hide to lick your wounds if you miss out.
Life changes overnight if you are a turfed-out incumbent. Anyone who has ever lost a job suddenly without really knowing why can understand it hurts.
How much worse it must be when your demise is public.
As a voter, even on those occasions when the people I vote for are elected, I feel an uneasy mix of happiness for the winners and sadness for the also-rans in the aftermath of anelection.
Thankfully, I was not having to be magnanimous after an election loss, merely conceding defeat in my smartphone-free campaign.
As both of my loyal readers will know, I have revelled in my dumb phone.
Texting and calling were enough for me. I could plug headphones into the phone’s radio and had used its torch in what could have been an embarrassing public toilet blackout.
I loved shocking strangers goggling at my burner phone by telling them I was masquerading as a drug dealer. They were never sure whether to laugh or swiftly call the police.
The closest I came to a drug deal involving the phone was a frenzied drive to Waikouaiti for a twilight handover of some prescription meds to the Crazy North Otago Cat Gentleman who had left home without them.
This annoying task was further complicated by him trying to alter the meeting place after I had set forth.
This involved me missing calls from him and him not answering when I pulled over to phone back. At one point, we drove past each other.
If weapons had been at the ready, I might have been tempted to use them.
Despite my reluctance to become part of the bowed head brigade constantly worshipping at the altar of the apps, over time I have realised there is an increasing expectation, within government and private organisations, that everyone is able to interact via smartphone.
After wrestling with the issue for months, I grudgingly conceded it might be easier to come to terms with the technology now rather than further down the track when more of my marbles may have rolled away for good.
(It is a shame our government doesn’t have a similar attitude to issues such as emissions reduction, water quality, pay equity and public health measures to address alcohol and fast-food consumption. Remaining in some sort of 1960s time warp on them is financial and practical madness.)
My resolve faltered a little when, on the morning of the purchase of the new phone, a headline flashed up on the RNZ website — "The man who’s never owned a cellphone" — featuring an Auckland professor, aged 63, still holding out from having any sort of a cellphone.
Was I letting the Luddite side down?
Fortuitously, one son, at my place building a hut with his sons in what is known as The Jungle, was able to assist with the setting up.
His 8-year-old elder son played his part, helping to choose my ringtone.
It has been pretty straightforward so far, although I must apologise to the Bruces in my life. For some reason they have never been properly distinguished (although in reality, all three are distinguished) in my contacts.
Not for the first time, I muddled them up.
On the old phone once, one of the baffled Bruces got a message from me saying a package had been delivered near his rubbish bins.
That might have sounded good for my drug dealer cred, but it was a meal and it wasn’t for that particular Bruce.
I still have visions of whichever Bruce I messaged forlornly wandering around his bins hoping for a lovely surprise.
One of my first messages on the new phone was from the Auckland-dwelling sister who told me I was in her daily Wordle group text.
When I asked if I needed to be in said group she said: "No. And you are not expected to reply with a wow, go you, well done, loser etc either."
She diligently sends it and I diligently ignore it.
Those who know I hate emojis send messages dripping with them, which I do not attempt to decipher.
An inadvertent tap on the emoji icon brings up the accusing message: "you haven’t used any emoji yet".
My youngest sister, the Earthquake Baby, attempting to break my smartphone news to her husband (a man in the camp of the Auckland professor and also familiar with my ACC history) said: "You’ll never guess what Elspeth’s gone and done".
His reply: "Broken something?"
Bless.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
