DoubleTake:Canvassers, the guerilla army of the elections , will be patrolling long after the generals have given up. But why?, asks Ann Marie Hourihane.
There are no strict guidelines on how to greet canvassers when they are standing on your doorstep in the pouring rain, but it is not best practice to send them on their way as you shout "Never in a million years!"
We were sorry afterwards, once we had closed our front door and discussed the miseries of canvassing, the exhaustion it entails, and the numbers of maniacs your average canvasser meets in an evening. But we weren't that sorry.
We are your average voter, busily ruminating on the political questions that are of such vital interest to the electorate. For example, is Ségolène Royal the Liz O'Donnell of France? Canvassers are the canaries of the electoral system; as soon as they started fluttering in their cages we all knew there was an election rumbling underground. And that was back in September. No wonder we have managed to contain our excitement so far.
But canvassers are also the guerilla army of the election wars. They are still patrolling the electoral jungle long after the generals have given up in despair, and the civilians have gone inside for their tea. Their triumphs and their sufferings go largely unreported. It would be a brave journalist indeed who would say that they had ever gained real access to the secret world of the canvasser - its passions and its trickery and the sheer hard slog of it.
A lot of canvassers seem to have forgotten why they started doing it in the first place. Like soldiers they just continue marching, their days brightened only by a brief, savage victory over a rival. Frequently this rival comes from their own party.
The best canvassing story of the year so far is the tale of the canvassing team that arrived on Dublin doorsteps at 7.30am, to the intense annoyance of the voters. The canvassing team then identified themselves as workers from the campaign of their candidate's party rival. Result? Maybe.
Of course this is only a rumour - but canvassing thrives on rumour, gossip and local knowledge. That's what makes it fun. This is why the prospect of Sinn Féin bussing in its canvassers from the North seems so very wrong. It's not that northern canvassers on our streets offend any of our electoral principles - we don't have any electoral principles - it's just that it offends the electoral culture of the Republic.
Within this ideological desert the canvasser is king, the real hero of any election. To any canvasser, no matter how devoted, it all comes down to numbers and, for many of them, the joy of the game. No wonder our Taoiseach is said to be a canvasser of such genius.
There is only one sacred guideline left for canvassers - Always Close the Gate Behind You - and after that it is pretty much open season these days. Even the old stand-by - Try to Call During Daylight Hours - is gone, now that half the east coast is commuting. The old after-Mass sweep won't catch young couples; you have to stake out Tesco on a 24-hour basis instead.
Because the canvassers, pragmatists first and last, are watching us too - quite carefully. One woman who spent her childhood canvassing in rural Ireland won't accept any whingeing from the electorate.
"People are annoyed if you call to their house and they're insulted if you don't," she said. "It's a bit like Hallowe'en."
As average voters we are not ready for the new-fangled methods of contemporary canvassing. When Michael McDowell's party machine dropped in a copy of Stephen Collins's book on the history of the Progressive Democrats we found it on the floor of the hall and thought that we had lent it to someone who had kindly returned it by pushing it through the letter box when we were out. So much for revolutionary - and expensive - canvassing techniques. It took me a fortnight to remember that I'd actually bought the book in hardback.
This week our Fine Gael candidate posted in her brochure, which shows a tiny girl walking along a road with no footpaths carrying a large rucksack with "fine gael" (note the fashionable lack of capital letters) emblazoned on it. For some of us this picture encapsulates the eternal mysteries of Fine Gael: cute, adorable even, but carrying a weight it is just not able for. A baby crossing the motorway. And that's before we opened the brochure and found the same kid, on page seven, dressed as a surgeon. Or possibly a hospital patient. It was hard to tell.
So we went back to worrying about what happens to Mormons during elections, with doorstep traffic at gridlock. This has got to be the toughest time of the year for them.