I CAN'T say I am sorry the general election is over.

Of course, I enjoyed meeting thousands of you in your homes during the campaign, and I apologise for interrupting your evening meal/ Coronation Street/your children's homework/ the repair of your 1959 Austin Healey 3000/a serious family row/an important telephone conversation with your bookmaker (please delete as appropriate).

But four weeks of sustained campaigning is probably enough and I am glad it is over for another four years. The blue rosette has been mothballed and the "We're Keeping Young" posters stored in a sympathetic barn - or at least those that didn't mysteriously disappear during the campaign.

I was delighted with the result in NW Hants, where my share of the vote and the majority went up - and with the results in nearby Basingstoke and Newbury. I am sorry my party did not quite make it this time in Romsey.

I was particularly pleased that my count ended at 3am rather than 6am - a stunning increase in productivity by all involved.

What was the high point of the campaign? One incident stays in my mind. I wasn't in a village - indeed, it was barely a hamlet. There was one large house, and eight smaller ones, miles from anywhere else. We were told that, if we went up a rutted track, we would find two isolated cottages.

I doubt if anyone had ever canvassed them before, so off I went in search of electoral reward, hacking my way through the undergrowth.

And there they were.

Outside one of these remote cottages, an elderly gentleman was mowing his lawn. So committed was he to the task that it was some time before my giant blue rosette attracted his attention. Before I could release my well-rehearsed patter on him with 10 compelling reasons for voting Conservative, he pointed his finger at me and asked: "Do you know what is wrong with this country?"

The correct answer was yes, but the diplomatic one was no. "Tell me," I said. "Too many foreigners." I scanned the horizon for any evidence of life - but there was not even another house to be seen, let alone a living creature.

I paused, searching for the right comment. "That's what a lot of folk are telling me," I replied, pressing some literature in his hand, and moving on.

Finally, may I, through these columns, make a dramatic and unusual personal statement about me and the leadership of the Conservative Party.

I am not throwing my hat in the ring. You read it here first.

www.sir-george-young.org.uk