Little red feminist and her little blue pencil

My god, it's been a depressing set of elections since I attained my majority. 2005: Michael Howard The Undead vs the Ever-Smiling Iraq-Invading Tuition-Fees-Raising Bush Fancier. 2010: Smarmy Robotic Ham or Shambolic Walking Disaster. The London Mayoral elections are always a little more heartening, both because you can see actual tangible change on the ground much more quickly, but also because Ken Livingstone is the only person I've ever enthusiastically voted for. And he lost.

I'm obviously not going to stop voting because my team keeps losing, or because I don't want to be on any of their teams. I looked forward to voting like most girls apparently dream of their wedding day: my mum always took me with her to the polling station, let me play with the little blue pencil, offered to let me make her firm Labour cross for her one year. But I declined. I wanted to save it, yearning for the day when I could draw my own cross, make my own small mark on the future of my country.

It was less romantic than I'd hoped. But most things are. And there's still a little flicker of excitement deep in my belly at the thought of popping into the polling station after work, making that firm Labour cross, and hoping to all that is good and pure that the outer boroughs don't piss all over us again.