DRAPIER is tired, Tired deep into the bones, but the adrenalin is still pumping. Today is his day of truth, and like everyone else he is apprehensive, nervous, edgy and glad at least the campaign is over.
It's hard to convey to a non-candidate what it is like to have spent the last three weeks in the total immersion of an election campaign. There is something deeply unnatural about stopping strangers in the street and asking for their vote, but even more unnatural is the frenetic pace of modern-day campaigning. It's just non-stop, and the long evenings ensured we started early and finished late - 18 hours a day for most of us.
But enough of that. All eyes this morning are on the count centres, and with the increased sharing of information among the political parties and the use of computers we should know the general trends fairly early in the day.
Drapier believes we will see some surprises, with one or two unexpected names in trouble and local factors intruding into some key decisions. In many cases the final seat will be decided by a margin so slight that even the finely tuned computers of the academic pollsters, Drs Sinnott, Laver and Marsh, will not capture them.
That's about the only prediction Drapier will make today. To tell the truth, Drapier has not had much time for the great national panorama over the past few weeks. How could he, when his entire energy was focused on ensuring his own survival? He left the bigger issues in the hands of the backroom boys and girls up in Dublin.
Drapier has said all along it would be too close to call, and he will not be budged from that position. The last IMS polls were far too tentative to give the final picture in any definitive sense and did not take into account the great TV debate between John Bruton and Bertie Ahern. Drapier believes the debate will have an impact on the final outcome.
Drapier will make a few further small predictions. Both Mr Bruton and Mr Ahern will do well and their respective parties will gain between 10 and 15 seats between them. Maybe more. Each in his own way had a good campaign, Mr Ahern starting stronger and Mr Bruton shading it at the finish. But for two men whose leadership has been under question, all doubts are now removed. Each is in undisputed control of his own party and, win or lose, each emerges from the campaign with his position enhanced and secured.
Drapier is amused to reflect on some of the learned punditry of recent years suggesting the two "Civil War parties" were in a state of inevitable terminal decline, and it was only a matter of time before one of them - usually Fine Gael disappeared off the scene completely. There wasn't much of that sort of talk around in this campaign, and Drapier expects even less of it after the weekend.
The truth is that, like it or lump it, we are left with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, and while ideologues or academics might prefer something more "logical", something on a clearer right-left spectrum, the reality is our big parties have served us well, in both cases bridging gaps within our community rather than inventing and accentuating them. To borrow Disraeli's phrase, both are genuine "one-nation parties". And our politics is all the better for that.
Drapier was warming to this theme as he watched the great debate, but it was left to his local inn-keeper - a shrewd political observer - to ask the obvious question: "What's to stop the two parties working more closely together?" What real difference is there between John and Bertie?
Drapier had no real answer, nor, he suspects, has anyone else. In any event, this is hardly the time or the place for such philosophical cogitations.
The campaign surprised Drapier. But then so has every other campaign since the early 1980s. It was by far the most polite campaign he has experienced. There was little anger and, at least until the last days, little obvious engagement by many of the voters.
People don't wear their political allegiances on their sleeve any more, certainly not like they did in the past. Nor is there any such thing as entire families voting the same way. Heads of families, even if they promise, are in no position to deliver the family vote. That day is long gone, and every vote stands or falls in its own right.
As for the issues, Drapier said at the outset of the campaign that they would not be the carefully choreographed set-pieces chosen by the handlers. It is always the ones that come out of nowhere that give us most grief.
So it was this time, and Mary Harney at least had the distinction of setting much of the agenda, although not in the way she might have chosen. The issue of 25,000 job cuts in the public service took off in mid-election, as did the single mothers question, although neither lasted the duration. Otherwise, few sparks flew, and the North failed to ignite as a major issue.
Drapier noted at the outset of the campaign that many, especially in the media, said this would be a "dirty" election. It was anything but. Drapier is old enough to remember when real insults were traded and the lower the hits, the more punters relished it.
Most of us have become too careful, with the soundbite and political correctness ruling OK. Drapier began to feel nostalgic for a Pat Lindsay, a Sean Dunne or a Frank Sherwin. There is not a spin doctor who could have tamed or handled any one of them. God rest them all.
FROM where Drapier sits, it strikes him that some of our media are so politically correct these days that old-fashioned political knock-about is regarded as "unserious".
Drapier thinks we could have done with more of it. It never bothered Sean Lemass or James Dillon, who regarded the rough-and-tumble and the trading of political insults as an integral and essential part of the democratic process. Putting the electorate to sleep was no part of their agenda. But that's enough to be going on with.
Next week Drapier, if he gets back, will be more focused. And if you did give it, thanks for the vote.