I’ve been away there for a couple of days in Omagh which is in the south of Northern Ireland. There was an election here this week, and I was drafted in to direct one of the outside broadcasts in for the BBC’s Election coverage.

This involved sitting in the back of a transit van (above) for long periods of time. I think on the day of the election count I was in there from about 10am in the morning ‘til 9pm at night, with two 10 minute breaks. I wouldn’t describe it as boring, as there was enough going on, and we fed a good couple of spots through to the (very slick looking) main programme, but there really isn’t much room in that van, and after a while, the engineer and I went a bit stir crazy.

Meanwhile everyone else on the team got to sit inside the canteen at the leisure centre where the count was being held! Although to be fair to them, they had to be there, while I had to be in the van 🙁

I don’t get to meet many people from News, as they’re in a different building from me, but everyone was really nice, and with a good sense of humour too! We had a good few drinks back at the hotel on the Thursday night, but thankfully I wasn’t too hungover when I returned to the van on Friday morning to continue work!

There was a bit of drama in the car park as well in Omagh on the day of the count, but annoyingly we didn’t realise what had happened until well after it had happened!

Oh and I didn’t bother voting either. There aren’t any of the traditional parties in Northern Ireland like Labour etc. and I really don’t know enough about local politics to get involved.