"Vote for me. You won't regret it."

Ah. The reason I haven't been around for a few days is lots of stressing about the speech I had to give as candidate. I downloaded stuff, printed stuff, harrassed the local party for stuff and then made stuff up; yesterday, I ran my campaign team ragged by refusing to concentrate on writing the speech for more than ten seconds at a time. Finally, I wrote it properly, the campaign team told me to speak slower and to be aware that I'd mentioned Daleks and horse-thieves in the same sentence, and promised to come in early this morning to help me out.

Last night I spent an hour on the phone to Hannah in an attempt not to write the damn thing. I ended up taking the Douglas Adams route and just finishing off the line I was on before going petulantly to bed.

This morning, I received an impromptu pep talk from Rice-Oxley after having regaled the library with the speech as practice, and went down into the hall to be informed by Mr Evans that everyone else had already drawn lots and I had to go first. I wailed so much that Harriet (Green) volunteered to swap with me. I accepted, with an askance glance at her outfit - she was in green from head to toe, with a big home-made green rosette and a lot of plastic bags. I was wearing red, but that's because I always wear red and nothing to do with Labour in particular. I had my rosette, though. I'm getting unduly attached to it.

And after the Greens had had their moment, I stood up and gave my speech. As I was saying it, I thought it went okay - people laughed in the right places - and I finished with: "Labour is the party of the many, not the privileged, private-school few. Vote for me." As I sat down, Harriet murmured sotto voce: "You're gonna get lynched."

But I wasn't. I got applause, and sat there smiling through the Lib Dems, Tories and Respect. We went out afterwards to get photos taken for the website - they're not up yet, thank god - and I ambled off to Chemistry with a feeling of a job well done. The interesting thing is that I thought it went okay, but it seems to have gone better than I thought - people stopped me to tell me they liked it, Mrs Barry mentioned I was the only candidate who didn't falter, and one Conservative die-hard informed me solemnly, "You almost convinced me", which made me laugh. The chemgeeks were pleased because I mentioned them in regards to the immigration point - seven people, five ethnic origins, natch.

So, I am pleased. I'm not looking forward to Question Time - I really ought to actually watch it tomorrow night - and then I can bask in the glow of never standing as a candidate for anything ever again. And feeding chocolate to the campaign team.

The other democratic matter of import going on today is the voting for librarian. There is no shortlist; it's the committee as a whole, and I am curiously emotional about the whole thing. The fact we need a new librarian is because I will only hold the post for another three weeks. I can't believe I've been doing this for a year; there's a farewell party for the committee on May 11th and I will cry. And then retire the icon on this post.

Before I go and actually do some work, just something on a fandom note: I am shortly to need a beta. I'm sure I can dig up someone who doesn't mind the usual spelling/grammar/style/canonicity thing, but it's a little more complicated than that. I loved the Doctor fangirling Charles Dickens in The Unquiet Dead, and the fic is based on him being a lit-geek and taking Rose on a slight literary odyssey through time. There's a little more to it than that, but that is the basic idea. Unfortunately, I can't write in properly literary style on account of my being such a Phillistine; basically, I want a beta who can look over a story to make sure I haven't dropped in any anachronisms or wildly improbable language.

Any takers? Pretty please? I'll find myself an ordinary beta, but right now I'm searching for a litgeek.