Mr Smith goes to Washington

"It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting" - Tom Stoppard

The Board's first experience with a local election count at the weekend reminded him of the time he went to see Stargate at the Odeon in Gants Hill in Ilford back in the day.

For the opening scenes, your senses are overwhelmed by the scale and sound and ambition of it all.

By the mid point you're only there out of a sense of duty, a desire to see the crusade through, as your spirit has started to crack and your mind turns heavy and idle.

By the end, you just want to shoot Kurt Russell in the eye.

There was rapture and glory and liquor at City Hall in the early hours of Sunday morning, as the will of the people crystallised into the disfigured forms of 17 men, women and a City Council.

But none of that joy belonged to The Board.

Indeed, were it not for the wonderful, wonderful Liz Creamer and her colleagues in City Hall plying him full of coffee, sandwiches and smiles, The Board would have gone all 'Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall' - storming the imaginary trenches of the counting tables, scalping every Kaiser's soldier he could reach.

So were my volumes of insight into the Limerick City East ward worth it?

Pah.

Every rapscallion from Athlunkard Street to Grove Island knew that the Mayor would get elected at the top of the poll, because that is what John Gilligan does. The sight of him being thrown atop aching shoulders in the dark every five years is almost a national institution.

Kieran O'Hanlon showed that he was truly boned and rolled in Teflon as a child, as he once again defied the voters' Fianna Fail cull, claiming the second seat, while Ginger McLoughlin waltzed in on count eight. Denis McCarthy of Fine Gael ran off with the empty seat in the corner on count ten.

Four seats were filled, four candidates went home happy, no Limerick Leader junior reporter climbed to the top of City Hall seeking an illicit glimpse of Elton John, slipped on the unseasonably wet ramparts and fell to his death on the shores of Curraghgower.

Hooray!

For a slightly less flippant City East roundup, and proof that The Board didn't simply spend the 2009 City Council count listening to The Blue Nile on YouTube for 13 hours, click here.