What it's like waiting for Winston Peters

There are slightly fewer than 500 square tiles on the Bowen House lobby floor (367 in the main lobby, 132 more in the entranceway), 813 black and white ones on Parliament's second floor and 227 in the Beehive basement core.

I know this because my fellow political journalists and I have counted them.

These are the three areas we're allowed to stand, sit and wait, for the leaders of the political parties holed up in a neutral negotiating room deciding the next Government of New Zealand.

We stop leaders Winston Peters and James Shaw who have to run the media gauntlet to get the lifts to their offices at Bowen House; Bill English on his way back to the ninth floor has the easiest job of avoiding us in the Beehive core, and Jacinda Ardern must cross the second-floor of black and white tiles where journalists wait, to return to her own offices at Parliament. They don't look as tired as we feel, yet, even though they're the ones doing the serious talking.

There are at least two camera-operators and a minimum of six journalists, ducking between each intercept-spot each time, in the hope one of these politicians might give something away about how their talks are going. Which way Peters might be leaning, why they've changed their negotiating teams, the different policy areas they're willing to concede on, and in which areas they're refusing to budge.

Like the rest of the country, we're waiting.

And when a meeting is set to finish, and we see movement through the glass, down the hallway - or get a call from one of our stakeout colleagues saying "incoming!" - we get a chance to ask those leaders how their meeting went.

And regardless of whether the talks are between NZF-National, NZF-Labour or Labour-Greens, we don't get much more than an over-used adjective.

So far? Positive, warm, constructive, excellent, productive. The most mundane descriptor came from Bill English after his first meeting on Sunday, when he said "fine, thanks".

And those on their negotiating teams, usually five or six senior advisors and MPs, don't utter a word. "Talk to the boss," they say. We'd like to suggest they lend their bosses a thesaurus.

However it's not the more than 20 hours of sitting on cold floors so far, or the lack of creativity that has been most grinding on journalists' gears, believe it or not.

It's the escalators.

On Sunday the travelators were off and both escalators broken between the Beehive and across the road underground to Bowen House. Monday, the travelators were on (thank God for a proper work day) but the upwards escalator was still broken. That's three flights of stairs to run up or down, 46 in all, when you get that "incoming!" call. It's hard enough for us, probably even harder for the 72-year-old power broker.

And today, Tuesday, you guessed it, it's still broken. What's a caretaker Government even for?

We know the laws around foreign ownership are being discussed in the secret talks led by Winston Peters, as we know immigration will crop up, Pike River, rail and superannuation.

But as far as we're concerned, at what we think (hope) is the halfway mark to the announcement from Peters on Thursday - which is his self-imposed deadline for a new Government - is that damn escalator will be fixed.

There are still many things to count before then, though. Someone suggested the number of tiles that make up the marble pillars, another the Bowen House Lobby decorative dots.
We're quite happy to take suggestions.
- Gia Garrick is Newstalk ZB's political reporter in the press gallery