“Shortly before dawn last Saturday morning, I awoke to a screech that would curdle the blood of a vampire. I had dreamt I was a candidate for the local elections and was out on the campaign trail” 
Áine Ryan YOU know that timeless moment when suddenly you waken from a nightmare. The room is pitch black. Perspiration clings to every pore. Butterflies play hopscotch in your tummy.
Shortly before dawn last Saturday morning, I awoke to a screech that would curdle the blood of a vampire. I lay motionless in the bed.
Slowly, I realised that I was the author of the scream myself. Phew. Slowly, too, I realised I was not running down a long, winding avenue, pursued by an extremely irrational Chihuahua.
Eventually, I also twigged that the weird noise over by the window was the radio and not the feral pooch that now had me cornered on the edge of a very high cliff. Somewhere on Achill, I think.
Finally, fully awake and compos mentis again, the full narrative of my nightmare began to unfold.
Unsurprisingly, it was directly related to an activity that dominated my working life for the last week. I had dreamt I was a candidate for the local elections and was out on the campaign trail.
Just before I woke, I had approached a beautiful little cottage, whose gardens were filled with primroses and pansies. A dear little old lady, with hair white as the driven snow, answered the door. Her wise old face crinkled with an angelic smile.
Well, that is, until soon after I told her who I was and why I was visiting.
“Vote No 1, Áine Ryan. Yes you will.”
I had just mentioned I could deliver her broadband and would set up a Facebook account for her. And, an en-suite bedroom at Mayo General Hospital at three hours notice. I had also managed to confide that I recently received the HGV license necessary to deliver chippings for the building of the N5 between Castlebar and Westport.
I also alluded to the fact that I would divide the old Bank of Ireland garden in Westport into vegetable allotments and personally deliver the produce each week. (How was I to know the old lady was a founding member of the Civic Trust.)
It was at this point in my monologue that I noticed an ominous change in her demeanour. “What party are you from anyway?” she cackled. “Fianna Fáil! Fine Gael! Sure you’re all the bloody same.”
Suddenly, the old bat was setting her dog on me.
As I backed away, whether it was naivety, or simple desperation for a vote, I said, weakly: “I have a hedge clippers in the boot of the car .... I can cut those Escallonia hedges for you now.”
My goodness, could that dog move.
“Get off my property. Get off my property,” she roared, waving a blackthorn stick high in the air. “I lost my pension because of your kind.”
… Suddenly, I was at the edge of that cliff with the pesky chihuahua barking at me....Eeek! What a nightmare ...
Last week, in the course of my work, I attended a number of local election campaign launches as well as the opening of three school projects by Minister for Education, Batt O’Keeffe.
At the latter councillors of every persuasion – along with TDs – jostled for pride of place in the numerous photo opportunities. Ironically, the pushing and shoving scenes were perfect for schoolyards. The watching schoolchildren couldn’t have done better.
Batt O’Keeffe’s ministerial entourage could also have taught Mayo’s boyracers a trick or two about overtaking on dangerously narrow roads and bad corners, hotly pursued by manic kamikaze councillors.
Meanwhile, at the local launches, one manifesto blended into another, one litany of promises became occluded by the next.
Well, except for one allusion in one speech.
Labour party neophyte and award-winning journalist Susan O’Keeffe – a special guest at the Westport launch – argued that government and the public service was there for the public and not for private groups.
She’s right.
