I LOVE voting. I love the voting booths, I love the ballot boxes, I love the polling stations, I love the three rossetted strangers with clip boards who sit in the corridor and I particularly love the little stubby pencil on the end of it a bit of string.

It’s very important, that bit of string. Theft and larceny lurk in unexpected places, my friends, and I, for one, covet that stubby pencil.

You can forget CCTV cameras and ingenious tracking devices, a roll of Sellotape and a length of string keep this nation safe from the likes of me; those who are prepared to steal and hoarde when the stubby pencil is dangled before them.

It’s not just the aesthetic beauty of the object that beguiles me, although who can resist her its ebony black sheen, so dark and alluring, so coquettish yet sturdy with her easily grippable girth and her oh-so-soft lead interior.

That’s got to be at least 4B inside hasn’t it? Like a firm strip of licorice sheathing a mysterious dark treacle.

It’s not just the invitation to enter into a booth, a private booth, for a secret tête-à-tête, a one-to-one with this object of my dreams.

Just me and the stubby pencil, alone for a few treasured moments, together, hand-in-stubby-hand.

It’s not even the fact that once alone the only thing we ever do together is write kisses on pieces of paper.

I love the stubby pencil, because for me it’s the symbol that for one day, one glorious day everybody, absolutely everybody, no matter how rich, how famous, how brilliant, how talented, how troubled, how downtrodden or how elevated you are, for that one glorious day everybody is the same.

There’s a lot of history behind the right for everyone to hold that stubby pencil.

And no matter who you may or may not be voting for, it’s worth remembering that this modest stubby pencil is actually a touchstone for our humanity.