Hope and apprehension

Granny doesn't think she can be the only person waiting with her heart in her mouth (and realising exactly what that cliche means: it's more exact than most), wondering how she can get through the next twelve days before the election. More polls this morning - Obama improving in all of them, except one, which gives him precisely 1 point of advantage. How this discrepancy is to be explained it's hard to know: but it's disturbing - especially for anyone as wound up around this issue as she is.) And then there's all the things that can happen between today - 23rd October - and then - November 4th. Terrorist attack? Damning messages from Bin Laden (though an Al Qaeda website yesterday - not widely reported in the European press as far as Granny can see - suggested the Osama Bin Laden would be rooting for McCain on the grounds that his presidency was more likely to follow the policies that made American so disliked among non-Americans in general and Muslims in particular, so favouring his campaign - an endorsement McCain, you'd think, could do without)? Some barely true/lying snippet about Obama which would drive undecided voters back to the Republican side? Ballot cock-ups/fraud a la Jeb Bush? Oh and worst of all, the assassination of Obama? - though that might lead to a sympathy vote for the Democrats, this last is a thought past bearing. It is one fear barely mentioned in the press for obvious reasons, but voiced by Timothy Garton Ash in an article in the Guardian this morning, which goes on to say how increasingly Obama is measuring up to the role of president - in the steadiness as well as in the intelligence and the stamina he has shown throughout this campaign; the kind of US president we have all - not just Americans - needed and longed for all those years. TGA concludes with words that coincide exactly with how Granny is feeling about this whole election - that never has there been one that gives everyone such a deep downside of fear and such a high upside of hope.

Journalists - good ones - do get it exactly right sometimes.

Well, Granny like everyone else will have to get through these days somehow. Her uneasiness is compounded at the moment by being alone up here - Beloved left for a week in the UK first thing yesterday - and by the uneasiness of the weather - wind, rain, cold, coming and going across the wide island skies, bang, bang - lash lash - shiver shiver: she even needed her fleece against the chill of the wind when taking the Beautiful Wimp down to his station on the land this morning. (It's Thursday, day of the hunters: his job is to bark them off.)

On the other hand; Beloved's return will be followed almost as once by the arrival of his Beloved daughter, her partner, and best of all the BELOVED BABY. Baby sitting will be required; the prospect of which Granny views with such pleasure, it might distract her somewhat; even more than a little from what is going on in the big world outside.