THE general election, which comes to its conclusion tomorrow, will be remembered for many years to come - and for unexpected reasons.

First, foremost and most chillingly, it will be remembered as an election dogged by death. Two major terrorist atrocities in the space of two weeks, our capital and England's second city struck by mass murderers hell bent on killing the people they have lived among, themselves prepared to die for their nihilistic cause.

Armed police at the polling booths tomorrow will be just one disturbing outcome of the terrorists' barbarism. But better to have have police bearing arms as we put our crosses on the ballot papers than that the election should not take place at all.

For if anything would have given a message to the terrorists that their cause is having an effect, that would have been it. How delighted would the jihadists undoubtedly still living among us have been to think their murderous comrades had stopped British democracy in its tracks?

No, the election must go ahead. Only a war should prevent an election being held - and whatever those brainwashed, brain dead jihadists may wish to believe, we are not at war. Under attack, maybe; but not at war.

Tomorrow's election will take place and so be it. But who could have predicted, when Theresa May stood outside Downing Street on April 18 and announced she was calling a snap election, that the campaigning period would have shaped up as it has?

With the polls so fantastically in her favour, it was understandable that Mrs May would be tempted to go to the country. A landslide victory was absolutely on the cards; and she will have had Gordon Brown's "bottling it" failure to seek his own personal mandate as prime minister very much in mind.

If ever the time was right to call an election that was it. The Labour Party in disunity and disarray; Jeremy Corbyn polling at an almost off the scale low; a moribund Ukip; and the Lib Dems reduced to little more than a fringe party: there was no reason for Mrs May to hold back.

And yet, the national Conservative campaign has been decidedly lacklustre, while Jeremy Corbyn has achieved the almost unthinkable and narrowed the gap between the two parties to a point which must have had the Conservatives wondering what the heck is going on.

Car crash interviews by Diane Abbott (our putative home secretary should Labour prevail tomorrow) and Jeremy Corbyn have been the most entertaining aspect of the campaign, with the rest of it being, frankly, dull as ditchwater.

Campaign slogans are all well and good - at the beginning. But after weeks of hearing about "strong and stable leadership" and "for the many, not the few", even the most faithful of party faithfuls must be wishing their leaders would change the record.

For, in these times of random and horrific terrorist attacks, we all know that it is actions, not words, that we really want from our politicians. We are fed up with sound bites and with watching prominent politicians avoiding answering straight questions from journalists and from the public.

"Let me be clear" is the standard response of all the leading political players we have heard from during this campaign - but clarity is what has been most lacking during this campaign. Whenever a politician of any hue utters that "let me be clear" mantra, my heart sinks, because I know that they have no intention of being so.

Television interviews by the leaders have been an exercise in not answering direct questions. The politicians hope they are getting one over the pesky interviewers; but they're certainly not getting one over the watching public.

Whatever the polls may be saying - and we all know how catastrophically wrong they can be at times - by far the likeliest outcome of tomorrow's election is a Conservative majority. Quite how large that majority is likely to be is, of course, a moot point.

But, come Friday, a beleaguered nation will be expecting whoever is our prime minister come up with more than words in order to deal with the terrorists who wish this country and her people such harm. "Enough is enough", said Mrs May after Saturday's attack in London. It certainly is, Mrs May. That's one thing we can all be very clear about...

GIN is a cause for cheer at the Treasury, with sales of the spirit soaring - along with the tax intake associated with that. No longer the preserve of navy blazer-wearing bores at the golf club, gin has been adopted wholeheartedly by the hipster youth of today, and rarely a week goes by without some captain of gindustry announcing they are opening their own distillery.

There's certainly plenty of them popping up in Cumbria. Where once pubs would proudly display lists of all the local ales available, it's now becoming more common to see blackboards advertising all the different gins on offer for the punters.

Quite why there has been such a surge in the gin trade, I have no idea. I'm partial to the odd G&T myself once in a while - it's a perfectly acceptable aperitif - but the present gin craze has pretty much passed me by.

A gin-loving friend who has sadly now gone to the great distillery in the sky once tried to educate me about gin, having been appalled to find a bog standard bottle of Gordon's in my pantry but l'm afraid his knowledgable advice went straight over my head. Maybe I need to try harder to understand what all the fuss is about gin.

Oh well, if I must. Make that a double...

SAD to hear of the death of Peter Sallis, the voice of cheese-loving Wallace from the Wallace and Gromit animations.

Although it is fair to say he wasn't one of our greatest actors (careering down a hill in a runaway bath on Last of the Summer Wine hardly requires acting skills of the Laurence Olivier standard), he certainly had one of the most instantly recognisable voices.

So where does the death of the 96-year-old Sallis leave Wallace and Gromit? It's hard to imagine anyone else voicing the hapless, Wensleydale-chomping inventor but him.

There are some animated characters who are so completely associated with the actors who give them voice (Homer Simpson being another), that it is difficult to see how the imaginary character can survive the death of that person.

Perhaps the creators of Wallace and Gromit will strike lucky and find a suitable replacement for Wallace. Someone from the north, obviously. He needs to be suitably silly, gaffe and accident prone, full of daft and impractical ideas, of a certain age, and clearly fond of his food. Step forward, John Prescott.

For some reason, it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to imagine the former MP being outwitted by a dog.