Hadyn Jones: Voting decisions seem to be based on a whim and a video clip

John Key's three-way handshake was an online hit. Photo / Supplied

Elections are funny things. Every once in a while we pick 100-plus odd, mostly middle-aged men to go and live in Wellington and run our country for us.

It's a good gig. They get to spend a third of what we earn, 15 per cent of what we spend, and the rest they sneak off us any time we have a drink, drive our car or do anything else remotely fun.

My day job is not quite as cushy but still pretty good. I spend a good deal of my time in the provinces looking for nice people to put on the telly. I thought maybe I'd pick their brain about the election while I'm there and tell you about it.

This nice idea is a bit problematic in practice this week because I'm struggling to make it any further than our heaving washing line.

It's Archer Jones' fault. He's about five minutes older than this election campaign, not supposed to be alive yet and spends most of the day screaming, urinating and feeding his milk addiction. He is not much of a political barometer.

My mother knows her politics, she just likes to change her mind a lot. Not so much a political barometer as an election slinky, bouncing from one party to another. She voted Christian Heritage until its leader went to jail, then she hopped over to the Greens.

She may be Gore's only Green voter. Gore has two things, farms and farmers. To have Green voters in your town you usually at least need kerbside recycling.

My cricket team are also voting National. They think John Key is a great guy.

They cite as evidence the hilarious three-way handshake he attempted when Richie McCaw received the World Cup. It's quite funny.

I think my wife is definitely confused. Last election she voted Green and gave her constituency vote to Ravi someone from National.

Every morning commute we'd crawl past Ravi and his sandwich board on the Sandringham Rd intersection.

My wife knew nothing about Ravi or his politics but it didn't stop her giving him the pity vote because we all knew Helen Clark would win Mt Albert.

Later Ravi got dumped for Melissa Lee as National's candidate in the by-election. History would suggest they should have stuck with Ravi and his sandwich board.

It's a big decision choosing someone to run our country for us and this year we seem too busy to care.

My Mum says she's got a quiz to organise for the League of Mothers; my wife will vote for the first politician to employ the sandwich board; and my cricket team are all on the internet googling the John Key handshake.

In the meantime, I think we're still a bit drunk on the euphoria of last Sunday.

I hope to be a bit more informed next week. I'm hitting the road to have a look around.

A man we used to hate called Donald kicks a goal and suddenly we couldn't give a monkeys who's next in line to run the place.

These are strange times indeed.