So, brim full of excitement (we’re political junkies anyway) and anticipation of "regime change" we stocked the fridge in our room with plenty of beer. I’d felt like a bit of a prat when I was booking the room; as my telephone conversation went something like this: "Hello… hello… is that the Hotel Taj Mahal? Yes!? Yes? Terrible line this… look mate, I need a room… yes, a room. And here’s the thing, it’s got to have a large beer fridge and must, absolutely must, have a TV. With CNN. No CNN, no stay… I’ve got to watch the US elections, you understand?" This was going to be a long few days and nights, that much we knew. Of course that was because of the time zones making our viewing hours peculiar at best, not some up front knowledge of delayed counts. We popped down to the pizza shop, bought a few family sized, full fat boy pizzas, if such a thing is remotely possible without meat! a couple of dozen large bags of crisps (all remarkably awful in both taste and proposed flavour) some popcorn and enough soft drink to fill a bath tub. We were on for a tele-thon. Oh yes, we were ready.

Indeed we’d been ready for years. I confidently predicted that Bush wouldn’t have a chance come 2004. I’d been saying it for years. Couldn’t happen. Not twice. Perhaps I’m an electoral ostrich? Throughout our travels we’ve met people from many, many countries and numerous walks of life who have all expressed deeply felt, and largely well reasoned, opinions over this election. The border guard at the Malawi crossing who was conducting an independent poll of all Yanks crossing his post assured us that in the last 3 years he’d only met one or two folk planning to vote for Dubya. Denizens of Europe, old and new, thought his policies detrimental to global peace and advancement. Anyone from the Muslim world, most vociferously those from around the Middle East, would happily vent over the Bush foreign policies. They were sometimes so misguided, and indeed just spewed plain fabrication in some cases, that we had the odd experience of actually trying, not so much to defend the Whitehouse, but at least ensure that the attacks carried some validity. I think the news coverage in the Middle East is as "Fair and Balanced" as some of that in the US! Folk in bars, from Australia to Zambia and all points in between…. everyone had interest in this election. We did find a couple of people who wanted Georgie Boy, including the peculiar South African diamond / hot motor "mule". He thought "Bush was cool" No further explanation, well except that he was also "dead good" no pun was intended I assure you, "at executing people" was forthcoming. Thanks for the thoughtful, insightful and articulate defence of your position. Weirdo!

The truth is the US election does affect everyone. This thing is bigger than the beat of a butterflies wings in the east that sets off the tidal wave in the west. No wonder the process takes a couple of years!   

But back to Agra. Fully stocked with all the requisite goodies for the biggest sporting event of the year we were ready to party. We just needed the results to come in. They were only another, oh eighteen hours away. Bloody time zones. Best nip out and get a few more beers. While I was out I saw a snake charmer with a cobra. Yet another good omen! There’s an old, and rarely told, Indian story that goes like this: When the sun burnt Euro kid with the American wife finds the dancing cobra, and sticks his nose so close to the fangs of the beast that he can smell it’s breath, then and only then, will power change hands! Well I saw that Cobra and in my excitement I almost kissed the slithering mass of venom (actually he was a skinny bugger whose venom glands were, no doubt, emptied every morning) I danced on air all the way back to the hotel. JFK was about to win. I was dizzy. Was it the anticipation, the beer, or has Sid the snake just given me a wee love bite?

Heide, not quite as ebullient as I was, though still pretty wound up (she’d actually worked on more figures than Hugh Hefner and crunched more numbers than a government actuary in the defence department to cover who could win what and loose where and still claim the prize) thought I’d best just lie down and wait for the returns to filter through.

Eventually they did. My mental map of a sea of blue sweeping from New England to Florida was scuppered pretty soon as West Virginia went to the Red camp. That’s Bush colours. Ah well, perhaps unemployment is actually preferable to life in coal mines. Doesn’t matter. The Blue Tide will wash westward from New England and New York to engulf the upper mid west. Bugger Ohio! Screw the Carolinas! Georgia is full of coke heads. The south generally is full of rednecks whose brains have been fried (I honestly don’t understand the Deep South, but who does?) so it’s obvious they would want red to signify their state. But Heide’s computations had factored these things in. It didn’t matter. We’d still nick New Mexico and Nevada. Clearly the rest of the middle was a gimme to the Bush camp, but they don’t really count. I wonder how many readers are, right now, now slamming me as an elitist coastal liberal? "Liberal" by the way isn’t a dirty word. Hmm, with those states went our dreams and aspirations. Still at least the left coast went the right way.

Shattered. Emotionally and physically. From the jaws of victory we had grasped defeat. We had also exhausted our beer and pizza. There was no celebrating to do anyway, so that didn’t matter.

To reprise, but slightly amend, the Bush camp's chant: "Only, Four More Years!"