Love Friday the 13th! Used to live at number 13 Woodstock Road – was a really happy house – so a good day for my ‘thank you’ party for all those who helped in the election.

Over a thousand people were sent invites – yes – that’s how many people helped with delivering, stuffing, addressing, donating, poster sites, printing, etc, etc, etc. If they had all turned up – we would have been in big trouble!

I arrived at Hornsey Community Centre about 7.40pm and it was already packed – and everyone, all evening, came up to wish me well. It was absolutely fantastic – such a genuine grass roots campaign. Heart warming!

Monica (Hornsey organiser) and Ed (Stroud Green ward) stood on chairs to address everyone and say special thank yous to those who had done above the call of duty – particularly Mark (my campaign manager) and Neil (my agent and Leader of the Lib Dems on Haringey Council).

Now Mark usually checks my blog writings for legal matters – i.e. I don’t want to get sued. And no doubt he will try and remove this posting as it mentions him by name – but I will be checking!

Both Neil and Mark are remarkable – both in ability and commitment. We have all been together in this for about eight years – and what happened on polling day wasn’t just the four week campaign, wasn’t just the war – but was the sum of years of work by a fantastic team of about thirty key activists who have worked unstintingly over these years.

Apart from Mark and Neil – each ward had its own team who soldiered on delivering the campaign in their area. Harold was in charge of printing; David in charge of telephone canvassing; Justin in charge of stakeboards – with great help from Alan and Dave, and so on and so on. The ward teams – Stroud Green (Laura, Richard and Ed), Crouch End (Ron, Peter and David), Alexandra/Bounds Green (Susan, Wayne and Dave), Muswell Hill / Fortis Green (Gail, Martin, Steve and Matt), Highgate (Neil, Bob and Melanie), Woodside (Nigel and Shantanu), Hornsey (Monica), Noel Park (Neil and Fiyaz). And the team who ran HQ – Valerie, Susanne and Monica. My sister – who organised my diary, visits to sheltered housing, leaflets at stations and telling for three wards. Duncan, Mette and Thuranie were my home team helping deal with election enquiries, sending out posters, etc. The Rea family and Bjorn were at HQ constantly and were the backbone of the stuffing operation. Wayne – who did such a great job as our Tottenham candidate (moving up into second with a big swing from Labour). And of course, my daughters, Jenna and Cady. Plus many, many, more!

I just wanted to publicly acknowledge the key team and the hundreds of others who were so generous with time, effort and money.

And the buggers – they presented me with a framed poster of the Hornsey Journal’s paper that they put outside newsagents. It reads in HUGE writing ‘I’ve nagged my way to victory – New MP’.

It’s so true – whenever people ask how I have got so far so fast – I always put it down to my ability to nag (politer term – lobby persistently). After all – it is a middle-aged woman’s life skill!