In Blackrock, Co Louth - reigning tidiest small town in Ireland, they’ll have you know - an older man snaps an errant piece of litter with his picker and shoves it into a bag.
He glances down the frightfully clean path as the mobile melee that is a presidential campaign rolls into the seaside village
The branded Heather Humphreys cars, bright yellow campaign jackets, the colourfully dressed candidate herself, and the not insignificant cohort of media orbiting her has roused the little village from its mid-morning slumber.
A woman driving down the main street shrugs gamely at the camera crews and journalists, who stop traffic as they trail across the road after the candidate. Humphreys strides into The Village Garden cafe, a pretty coffee shop on Blackrock’s main thoroughfare, and brings the whole media kit and kaboodle with her.
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Spoonfuls of overnight oats and coffee cups hang in the air as the stunned patrons watch the national media overwhelm what had been, until moments ago, a peaceful coffee shop.
In their surprised glee to meet her, husband and wife John and Catherine Pepper, natives of Blackrock, wrangle Humphreys for a chat.
After a quick search in the depths of a handbag, a bit of paper is produced, and John insists that Humphreys sits down and signs a message to each of their children: Seán and Meábh who live locally, and Sienna who is out in Dubai. “And do one more,” he tells her, for a grandchild not yet born. “I wanted them to be the first in Blackrock and Dubai to have the president’s autograph,” John explains.
Humphreys helped John, who is visually impaired, into the seat beside her along with his white cane. “It would be a terror if I collapsed beside the president,” he told her.
[ On the canvass with Jim Gavin in Roscommon and Catherine Connolly in BallyfermotOpens in new window ]
John, who is a lifelong Fianna Fáil supporter, assured Humphreys: “If I still had my faculties, I’d be out campaigning for you.” He explains to The Irish Times that he had canvassed for “Albert and for Charlie,” but would break the habit of a lifetime and vote for Humphreys instead of for Fianna Fáil. “And if I had my sight, I’d be campaigning for her. That’s what she means to me,” John said.
Out on the prom, another Soldier of Destiny was pledging his support for Humphreys. Declan Breathnach, the former Fianna Fáil TD for Louth, has known Humphreys for years through local and national politics. They even danced together back in the day, though Breathnach says Humphreys had “two left feet”.
But why would a former Fianna Fáil politician not support Jim Gavin? “I don’t know Jim Gavin, I suppose. And when you know somebody and know them on a very personal basis, I think it’s incumbent on you to say what you feel.”
On Fianna Fáil’s presidential campaign in general, Breathnach says “there was a lot of dithering [that] went on within the organisation, and I’m sure that Billy Kelleher saw that as well”.
Fine Gael couldn’t have crafted a canvass that suited Humphreys more. The visit to Blackrock revolved around the diligent Tidy Towns committee and, of course, the local credit union. Tidy Towns in Blackrock seems to be something akin to a local sport, or maybe a religion.
[ Heather Humphreys denies Simon Harris pressured her to drop disability reformsOpens in new window ]
The committee effusively thanked Humphreys for pushing for the competition to continue during Covid-19 when she was the minister responsible for community development. Blackrock manages a “voluntary” ban on election posters, which every candidate has known better than to breach.
Mary Murtagh of Louth Tidy Towns together thanked Humphreys for her compliance. “It’s the cable ties,” Mary says, visibly wincing at the thought of them.
Humphreys recalls how her grandmother would bring her to Blackrock on her holidays. “And we had the tea in a flask, and we had the sandwiches on the beach, weather permitting!”
Someone produces a sprig of literal heather for her. “I’ve me bit of heather,” Humphreys says, as she fusses to pin it to her lapel, “heather for the Heather!”
People are leaning out of passing car windows to pledge first preferences. There are “wee selfies,” everyone is citing whatever Monaghan relation they can think of (“your mother must have been good stock so!”) and the spirit of the late county and western star Big Tom is invoked more than once.
“I knew him well,” Humphreys told a voter emolliently, “he was a gentle man, and a gentle giant”.
As is compulsory any time Humphreys visits a town, she also goes into the local Connect Credit Union to approvingly survey it and its comparatively low rate of written-off loans. “Must be very decent people in Blackrock,” Humphreys, who used to work as a credit union manager, says.
In nearby Ardee, Humphreys graciously makes impressed noises when shown around the town’s run-down, cobweb strewn castle; which the local community has been loyally trying to restore for over a decade. “It will be lovely when it’s finished,” Humphreys says, generously. She also calls into a Men’s Shed in Slane, where she tried her hand at working a circular saw.
