Róisín Ingle with Gerry Adams:Gerry Adams moves people. To tears. While pounding the streets of Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, yesterday with local Sinn Féin candidate Martin Kenny, a dark-haired woman stops him in the street.
She is breathless at the encounter. "I'm so pleased to meet you," she says, shaking his hand. Overcome, she walks away wiping her eyes.
Afterwards, still weeping, the woman explains herself. "I am from Omagh and 30 years ago, I left this country for London. Things have changed so much. He is such a fine person, a symbol of everything that is good and hopeful about Ireland," she says, apologising for getting emotional. "I'm not," she insists, "the kind of person who gets emotional."
There's a huge welcome for Gerry in Carrick-on-Shannon. He stops to talk to some schoolchildren, who are thrilled to see him.
"Tiocfaidh ár Lá!" shouts a young blond woman sitting in a car. The response to this from Gerry and the Sinn Féin crew is muted. Men in trucks beep at the Sinn Féin leader in support as they drive past and trendy young men begin to follow him down the road, pied piper style, towards the Shannon.
With Gerry it's all "how're you gettin'?" and "what's the craic?" and "hiya missus, enjoying the weather?" and, if he's interrupting someone: "sorry for cuttin' in on you". He wears a freshly pressed light-blue short-sleeved shirt. Everywhere he goes, he is greeted by outstretched hands and shy smiles; everyone wants their photo taken with him.
Mostly everyone. There are tears of admiration on the campaign trail in Roscommon-South Leitrim, but there are angry outbursts too. Earlier in Boyle, Co Roscommon, a stocky man in shorts refuses to shake Gerry's hand. He shoos him away, saying that his brother was once forced to drive 15 miles with a proxy bomb in the boot of his car. "You try it some time," he says, spitting out the words. "And then try voting Sinn Féin."
Gerry just keeps on walking. "It's inevitable," says one campaign worker. "The trauma that people went through, you will always meet someone who is still emotionally caught up in that. But look at the picture of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley in The Irish Times today, that's the future, not the past." The man in shorts is soon forgotten.
There's a group of young men waiting outside Boyle courthouse who have plenty of time for Gerry. Before lunch, he sits for a chat in a hotel beside the river. Is May 8th going to add momentum to Sinn Féin's general election chances? "Anybody who dismisses it is making a huge mistake," he says. "Next Tuesday is going to be a good day for Ireland, people are telling me they feel proud. They have some sense of Sinn Féin being part of that, it was us who made the agreement and people appreciate that."
He smiles and says Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley are "on honeymoon".
"I hardly get to see Martin anymore," he laughs.
Gerry Adams moves people. It's all very mysterious. At Cavan hospital, the nurses tell him they appreciate his support, a woman on a dialysis machine says he's made her feel better and the old man in the sun-drenched garden of the psychiatric ward smiles as he shares a few moments with the Sinn Féin leader.
As he finishes a lengthy tour of the hospital, a woman in a pink dressing gown runs up the corridor desperate to say hello. He gives her his warmest smile and she tells him about her gall stones and her lung clot. "I just had to meet him," she says as he walks away. Why? "Why not?" There's no tears, but her eyes are shining.