D-41 - Groundhog Day but we're all 5 years older!

When the alarm went off at 5am I did ask myself "why", but the answer didn't take long to come. Because I suggested it - and there is no way I would ask our dedicated volunteers to get up in the dark and drag their weary bones to a railway station to hand leaflets to commuters if I wasn't prepared to do it myself. 

So I was up and showered and at just after 6am I was at Chatham railway station to meet Tracey Crouch and the team, with 1,000 leaflets and a cheery "good morning" for every commuter. It was however a feeling of deja vu as it was this day with the same candidate and the same feeling of nervous anticipation five years ago when we officially launched Tracey's first election campaign in 2010.  My thanks to David Wildey, Simon Wray and Stephen Peachell who joined us this morning.

Elsewhere in West Kent all was going to plan. Here is the team at Tonbridge station at 6.30am (probably the first time Ben Elks has seen 6.30am and it not being on his way home). Thank you Ben Elks, Russell Lancaster, Michael Payne, Jon Botten (taking photo) and Nicolas Heslop (out of sight). 

And here is West Kent Chairman, William Rutherford with Natasha Rutherford and David Scott at Tunbridge Wells Railway Station at 7am.  In total, we had 14 stations covered today.

After meetings with the printer and the mailing house, it was back to West Kent Towers to thank the volunteers who were packing and data-capturing - then two hours working with Jon Botten catching-up with the 200+ emails which had arrived today. 

Finally with the help of Max (one of our team of data entry volunteers) we loaded up the van with 24 sacks of outgoing mail - the Fighting Fund Appeal!

Tomorrow I will be "live blogging" as I dash around West Kent visiting as many of our 26 street stalls as time allows and thanking our volunteers for staffing them.