Thursday

We get up early and head down to Willoughby Methodist Church to cast our votes before work. Having never received polling cards, we turn up to the church hall hopeful that we are in fact registered properly - and it takes a few minutes of flicking through the pieces of paper on the table to find our names and get our ballot papers. It seems crazy that a general election in 2010 can be run so primitively - and it turns out later in the day that there has been chaos in other constituencies where people have queued for hours and even been turned away from the polling stations. Don't they have touchscreens in the US?!

Work passes fairly smoothly and afterwards I get the tube to South Kensington to meet K. The National are playing at the Royal Albert Hall and we have free tickets, but first we head for some dinner at a place called Cactus Blue, where we have a voucher for 50% off their tasty-looking Mexican food. As it happens the food is very nice, but after they sneak a £4 bottle of mineral water onto the bill and whack a 12.5% service charge on there we barely save any money and I leave feeling a little ripped off.

No matter, as we walk off the fajitas on the way up to the Albert Hall. I've never been here before, and it's certainly an impressive piece of ostentatious Victorian architecture - though it seems oddly intimate when we get to our seats on the first tier above the stalls. The acoustic diffusers on the ceiling are cool too.

The National come on just after nine and, while looking a little overwhelmed by the venue and a bit awkward with the rows of seated fans staring at them, get into their stride over the course of the next hour and sound wonderful by the end. They're truly one of my favourite bands these days and while it's another weird place to see them (the last one of their gigs I went to was at the Royal Festival Hall) or indeed any other rock band, the gig is fun and we head out into the night at 10.30 to beat the crowds back to the tube.

When we get home at around 11.30 the first election results are coming in and we sit down with a bottle of wine to watch the coverage, first on Channel 4 with Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell, then at 1 switching to the traditional Dimbleby-Paxman-Robinson programme on BBC1. Like most election programmes, it is incredibly compelling viewing - especially this year as none of the results coming in seem to point to a winner, with the exit polls predicting a hung parliament. After the wine, K goes to bed and I switch to Jack Daniel's and Coke to keep myself awake - but finally succumb to exhaustion at 3.45, little the wiser to the result of the election.