Counting down the hours

If the count centre at Cavan Leisure Complex could be termed ‘ground zero’, the ‘zero’ part seemed to be doing a lot of heavy lifting over the weekend. Someone once described election counts as being akin to war – a lot of waiting around, whispering conspiratorially, moving pieces into position and speculating as to what might happen, before sporadic and intense outbursts of activity.

That came to mind over the weekend as I binged on election coverage, starting with an hors d’œuvre on RTÉ television, cleansing the palate by listening to Northern Sound’s live broadcast and taking time to savour the main course that was the excellent live blog updated by my colleagues on anglocelt.ie.

Fairly quickly, I came to the conclusion that if th is was, as that sage commentator once suggested, a prolonged battle of sorts, it was the Hundred Years’ War, dragging on and on and on…

On a few occasions, it seemed there would be white smoke as Returning Officer Joseph Smith or one of his team took to the microphone but all that was up was a car double-parked or some such trifling matter.

On the front line, there was frustration. Texts started to fly in – “why is Cavan always so slow?” asked one – and I wondered myself, too, although working usually in the so-called toy department, I didn’t feel qualified to answer.

“Break it down in simplistic terms,” I asked one seasoned reporter of a different parish.

“Slowly, slowly, county votey,” he shot back. Was this well-known election jargon or was he joking? None the wiser, I held my counsel. The wait went on.

At one stage on Saturday evening, RTÉ switched to a count centre somewhere down the country, the presenter hurriedly interrupting one of the guests (more cutting across goes on during live election coverage than in the opening seconds of a demolition derby) to announce that the results of the ninth count were in, as the pictures switched to some guy in a suit, standing underneath a basketball hoop. Meanwhile, in Cavan, the wait for the very first count went on. And on. And on.

“Nothing happens,” wrote Beckett in Waiting for Godot. “Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s awful.” Waiting for Joe wasn’t much easier, not that it was any one person’s fault but when you’re the last count centre in the land to finish, it’s not a great look.

And outside of our own team here, there was precious little coverage of Cavan Monaghan in the national media as the weekend went on. In fairness to the Fourth Estate, it was hard to provide updates when, well, for the longest time, there were none to be mined.

On Saturday afternoon, we were in the car for two hours, radio on full blast. In that spell, it seemed, every constituency bar ours got a mention on RTÉ; ours was the count centre that time forgot.

That evening, then, we ventured into Drumalee ourselves but found, predictably, that all was quiet; even the carpark was half-empty. So, we headed home, resumed our position on the couch and took to refreshing the Celt’s blog every 30 seconds or so.

On the gantry, they were doing an outstanding job, despite the interminably slow process unfolding around them – but there is only so much you can write about nothing. Sometimes, as with a match report when the action is scant and the details scanter, you’re well advised to write in a sort of treble-speak – say what you’re going to say, say it and then say you said it.

“5.23pm,” went one update. “The result of count five is imminent.”

There followed the result of count five, and then discussion of same. And then, in an ‘all filler, no killer’ classic: “Chief Executive Eoin Doyle has arrived at the count centre.”

After a while, I noticed this had become a trend as the arrival of persons of note was recorded. Such was the endless nothingness that each of these comings was deemed important enough to merit mention on the blog, a sort of ‘inverse Elvis’ situation where entrances to the building were worthy of announcement.

I felt for the Celt staff on duty; I guess they’ll never know the reason why, to paraphrase the King while we’re talking about him, this was dragging on as it did – but it did. And it would be late Sunday night or early Monday morning before things really got all shook up.

So, I turned to Twitter to see had anyone anything to say there – but it was reflective of the general mood.

“We’re at that point of the count in Cavan Monaghan where everything is beginning to look like a drink,” posted a user called Dave Marron, with an accompanying picture showing the names of candidates Gordon, Hendrick and Martin, altered to read Gordons, Hendricks and Martini.

And another from a poster called Richy Craven.

“I’m going to write a Rom Com about a hot shot reporter who’s sent to cover the Cavan-Monaghan constituency count and falls in love with the local schoolteacher as she’s stuck there for the three weeks it takes to get the final result.”

The clock kept ticking and I continued to burn the midnight oil following the blog, which was the best place online for up-to-date information (by contrast, RTE television, on Sunday evening, seemed to be tipping six candidates to get elected in our five-seater – they had a lot to cover and local insight in Cavan Monaghan was extremely limited). On the blog, I could sense a degree of tedium-induced mania in the wee hours. Note the following updates:

“10:43pm: We all got a bit excited there. The returning officer stepped up to the mic but not for the results of count eight - there is a Mercedes outside blocking somebody in!”

“11.04pm: The returning officer has told the Celt they intend to continue the count tonight until it is completed. As of now there are no candidates elected, so it will be a long night ahead. Please stay with us!”

My favourite was posted at 3.03am (but marked ‘pm’, as tiredness understandably kicked in for Seamus, Damian, Gemma, Aisling, Linda and Co):

“3:03pm: A bunch of teenage girls look to be making a Tik Tok dance video. It’s the most excitement we’re had here in the count centre in about two hours.”

The last update was at 4:30am. By then, things were just getting really exciting, with Deputy Pauline Tully appearing to have lost out and several still in the running for the fifth seat. And it was then that the pin was pulled, with candidates, party aficionados, election staff and the poor unfortunate media instructed to return at 1pm on Monday.

It’s Monday evening, 6pm, as I write. I checked RTE.ie to see had any other constituencies been as drawn out as ours and came across a story, posted at 5.43pm, which began: “With day three of counting in Election 24 under way, 171 of 174 seats have been filled so far.”

The three outstanding? All were here, in Cavan Monaghan, officially the slowest count centre in Ireland, by a distance. Of course, one has to be fastest and one slowest but this seemed – not unlike this column, you might say, unusually and tortuously drawn out.

It was then, deadline looming, that I checked out and returned to the sports beat – at least, when it gets to the business end, winners and losers are decided on the day there.