I WAS at the Valley Leisure Centre in Newtownabbey for the 2007 assembly election count.
Print, radio and TV hacks alike were all huddled around the few precious power points at the four corners of the room when a prominent reporter from a (unionist-leaning) Belfast newspaper let out a whoop of delight, exclaiming: “John Dallat has been re-elected, journalists everywhere can breath a sigh of relief.”
We broke briefly - from squinting at scraps of paper with scrawled names, party labels and bewildering figures from which we were struggling to construct coherent accounts of what the hell was happening in East and South Antrim - to chuckle approvingly.
Being a professional politician is a funny old job. You can be incredibly busy one minute, even running a country, but when the term ends you find yourself jobless unless you can persuade enough of your neighbours to vote you back in again.
It’s an uncertain time too for journalists.
We forge relationships with councillors, assembly members and MPs that are in some cases closer than those with colleagues in our own media outlets.
The perceived political philosophy of your publication or broadcaster does not necessarily correlate with the party those politicians belong to. The official press offices are more likely to stick rigidly to such divisions than individual members who build up the unlikeliest of rapports.
Then, just like that, they can disappear – sometimes unexpectedly, democracy will do that.
For some at least, there is less uncertainty in these assembly elections. We already know 16 of the current crop of members will not be seeking re-election.
Most will be missed by some on this side of the barbed-wire fence.
As my colleague demonstrated during that long, long night in May 2007, the member for East Derry will leave behind a particularly big hole behind him – possibly literally in terms of newsprint.
An enthusiastic, industrious and iconoclastic MLA, so numerous were his Assembly Questions, even if you never spoke to him in your entire career you probably had him to thank for a good proportion of your stories.
His healthy disrespect for pomposity and privilege made him a natural friend of the journalist who positively revelled in the opportunity to `stir the pot’ when it came to pricking the egos of the great and the good or expose drains on taxpayer resources.
We all hope they didn’t indeed break the mould when they made John Dallat and some among the new guard will take up his irreverent baton.
Sadly, in the case of one politician who definitely did break the mould and indeed the glass ceiling, there seems to be very little prospect of seeing her like in the assembly any time soon.
South Belfast assembly member, Anna Lo - the UK's first ever parliamentarian from the Chinese community - is ending her nine-year spell on the Hill after becoming disillusioned with politics and dismayed by racist abuse directed against her by loyalists.
I first met Anna Lo when she was a spokeswoman for the Chinese Welfare Association and at a time when one could barely have conceived she could go on to be elected to a Northern Ireland political forum.
But elected to the assembly she was in 2007, and actually went on to top the poll in her constituency in 2011.
Tragically even that resounding endorsement from the electorate has not been enough to overcome the challenges of working within the stultifying atmosphere of Stormont.
Perhaps worse still, there do not seem to be credible ethnic minority candidates coming up through any of the parties to replace the redoubtable Ms Lo, raising the sad but inevitable question - how far has the `new’ Northern Ireland really come since devolution?
As Anna Lo discovered, while it is a tremendous achievement to be the first ethnic minority in the chamber, there is little point in being the only one. We hoped she represented a breakthrough, not a token.
Alban Maginness, who is also surrendering his long-held seat in North Belfast, will take some comfort in the fact that his “mould breaking” – becoming the first nationalist mayor of the city in 1997 – did in fact establish a real legacy.
If the SDLP’s passing of the guard proves successful, his seat will be filled in the next parliament by another former nationalist (and indeed female) Belfast mayor in Nichola Mallon.
On a personal level, I’ll miss all those departing for different reasons.
Not least Strangford assembly member Kieran McCarthy for the handwritten statements he used to fax through to the office until VERY recently and Basil McCrea for the opportunity it gave me to say “Ba-SIL!” in full Fawlty Towers-style every time I was picking up the phone to ring him.
Thanks for the memories, guys and gals.
