On the canvass:Cecilia Keaveney had stopped for her teatime meet-and-greet at Keenan's petrol pumps, when politics and circumstance collided. We had just begun talking about the litany of violent car crashes and deaths that cast a shadow over Inishowen in recent years. Keith Dugganwith Cecilia Keaveney
"Well, the car deaths and crashes have eased a wee bit," the Fianna Fáil TD was saying, when she was interrupted by a terrific bang on the main road. Through the squall of the evening, we could see that a small white car had left the road and clattered into the green embankment.
Thankfully, it was a relatively minor crash, although serious enough for the almost immediate arrival of the traffic corps and an ambulance to administer care and law to the young driver. The car had maybe clipped the pedestrian crossing or just skidded in the rain. Either way, as locals stood outside the cheerful shopfront sheltering from the mist, the consensus was that it could have been worse.
"It's good that you're here to see this, Cecilia," said one woman, standing at the driver's door of her pale blue Jaguar. "There have been seven people killed at that junction alone, including my nephew. It's a death trap."
The road from Newtowncunningham travels along Lough Swilly into the heart of Inishowen. This is Big Sky country, the achingly beautiful and complicated palm of Donegal that opens out between the Foyle and Swilly and ends with the stark magnificence of Malin Head. This is Cecilia Keaveney's patch, it's her heartland and it is fair to say that, above all TDs, she represents a part of Ireland that operates on a different frequency.
"People here feel different and their affinity is often to Derry rather than west Donegal. We would be in Belfast as quick as we would be in Bundoran. So the mentality is a Northern mentality in many ways."
Fianna Fáil electoral strategy means that Keaveney does not canvass south of Keenan's petrol station and stores.
There are more than 30,000 people living in Inishowen and of the 16,000 votes cast at the last election, Keaveney attracted 52 per cent of the vote. She believes she needs in excess of 9,000 votes to secure safe return to the Dáil for a third term and has been touring Inishowen for the last 50 days. Keaveney is a comfort name around these parts. Paddy Keaveney was a Blaney man, winning a Dáil seat in a byelection in 1976. He later rejoined Fianna Fáil.
"Dad didn't like the national scene, to be honest," Cecilia remembers. "He didn't like being away from home."
He was a county councillor from 1976 until 1995, when he fell ill. He had his daughter co-opted to fulfil his functions that July and died nine days later. A year later, Neil Blaney passed away, and at the subsequent by-election, the Fianna Fáil party machine saw Keaveney, popular and energetic, elected to Dáil Éireann.
"It's funny that 30 years on, Blaney-Keaveney is on the ticket again," she says.
Fianna Fáil's bid to keep the three seats held in this constituency by Jim McDaid, Keaveney and the party's prodigal son Niall Blaney seems perilous, with notable challenges expected from Fine Gael Senator Joe McHugh and the Sinn Féin man Pádraig Mac Lochlainn.
"The question is: have all the Blaneyite supporters come back into the party or have some gone to Sinn Féin," muses Keaveney.
The belief that Keaveney is a safe seat alarms her, and as she bounds through a Newtown estate in the rain, she pleads with her constituents not to be complacent.
She rings doorbells on 80 houses and knows the Christian name of every occupant except one: "Jehovahs live here. They don't believe in politicians. Plus, they'll keep me chatting on the doorstep half the night."
It is a disorienting thing to knock on dozens of doors and get snapshot after snapshot of one community engaged in the universal teatime chores and habits: dinners, TV shows, homework. Keaveney clearly enjoys the banter and has a humorous, sometimes irreverent style. "Are you getting the hip done, John," she says to an elderly man who appears wearing crutches and a big grin.
"Nah, the knee."
"Well, I'm on the lookout for an auld buck with a bad knee, a bad heart and a load of money" she says, as he roars laughing.
Her basic message is the same. "I like the job, I work hard at it - 13,000 problems solved in Inishowen. If I get back in, I can keep working for the area. If I don't, the office closes and I go back teaching. I hope ye can keep me in the trouble I'm in."
If one thing has surprised Keaveney on her tours, it is the number of women who have sat her down and told her of domestic abuse.
"People are living faster lives and there are things happening in houses that people won't or can't speak about. And people are lonelier. There is this thing of being forgotten. A sense of 'us and them'."
Keaveney has been their emissary, their voice way down in Dublin and they like her chattiness. There are no airs and graces with her. She's been a TD for over 10 years and they feel that they know her.
"She's a grand lassie," said one man. "She's one of us."
In Inishowen, that counts as a glowing endorsement.