On Saturday night I got out the Footrot Plonk, and rolled up the street to my friend Simon's election night party.
Well, I believe I did. I am writing this a couple of nights before it happened, but don't worry about my quirky timeline. My account of the festivities is exact. I know election night parties as well as I know the Presbyterian hymn book.
They are select denominational gatherings of the faithful, who've learnt the same songs and order of service. Round the corner there'll be another election party where they prefer Gutrot to Footrot, and sing from a different hymn book. This matters not. They have a perfect right to be fatheads.
And so we arrive, open a bottle, and note that apart from the sausage rolls and cheese sticks, at least three women have brought excellent quiches. (You will recall that in better times when it was Gents 2s 6d and Ladies a plate, these were known as ham and egg pies).
The One News bods are considering the early figures from a polling station west of, I think, Waipukurau, while the Three team is fudging.
For some time I've suffered from electile dysfunction - the inability to get aroused. But this campaign has restored interest because it was, by a country dunny, the smelliest we have sniffed.
Its low point also provided its weirdest joke. Did you hear about the American, the Canadian, the Australian, and the German who rented the Auckland Town Hall for something called the Moment of Truth? First came the German who ... Oh, I'm sorry.
You know that one already?
Anyway, I advised the host to keep the fire extinguisher handy not just because the rivals up the street might gatecrash - it was more that we don't know what Kim Dotcom will try to burn down next.
The party gets louder. Stories are swapped. Nobody believes that David Shearer, Phil Goff, Annette King, and David Parker, were gobsmacked by my most recent speech. Well that's almost true. Most of the Labour front bench turned up for my old friend John Harvey's birthday. (He's an insider).
I had the job of proposing one of the toasts, and spilling the beans on him. I thought I did OK, but I was topped by the younger brother who revealed the wretch would score 300 in the backyard at Mum's, and refuse to retire.
Ms King got the giggles. She bats on, too. But why wouldn't she? I feel personally for the opinion pollsters whose scoring comes up for judgement on election night.
My company did the election polling for Australia's Ten Network, and part of the deal was you fronted for the election night panel.
Serious polling started a month before, and we boasted a mad professor who'd figured some way for creating better interview samples. For the first three weeks our polls looked much the same as the others, but our final one, for their Election Eve News, turned to custard.
It showed a large late swing with which absolutely nobody agreed. Not a sausage. We were miles out. Disgusted or embarrassed, the Network buried the poll late in their bulletin. On election night The Man Who Got It Wrong moped around the studio, ignored and useless. Then, around 10pm the votes counted tally began to show we weren't total idiots - we dunces had polled dead on the money.
Networks are networks. Immediately they began boasting they had the only experts who'd got it right, and wheeled the leper out as the panel's new guru. Yes, we were tossers.
I spent some teenage years in Dargaville, a town that was going to the dogs but hadn't yet made it. The place was crackers enough to elect New Zealand's only member for the old Funny Money party, Social Credit.
But the school's First XV had a great first five, a nice bloke, whose standout talent was he could boot equally well off either foot.
''There's a technical term for someone who's as good with the left as the right,'' our coach explained.
''Winston is 'ambidextrous.' He can go either way.''
Yep, same Winston. You may know he also sells a decent dummy.
John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
