Elaine Edwardsgrew up in Charlie Haughey's constituency of Dublin North Central and offers a personal reflection on his towering presence on the Northside.
Charles Haughey, our local TD, was a character, a human being and a politician where the words 'larger than life' don't ring hollow as a description, for whatever reason.
When I was growing up close to Donnycarney, the heart of his Dublin North Central constituency, he was a regular on the doorsteps and at the church gates.
He was, in a word, royalty in Donnycarney and Artane. His ministerial car was greeted with gasps of excitement when he arrived for the opening of annual residents' fundraising events or community games.
Kids flocked around the car and greeted him with the 'howiya Charlie' cheeky grins, little hands out so they could later tell their friends, their mams and dads, they'd met 'The Boss'. Even the kids from the Fine Gael families.
One of the many occasions I watched in childish awe as he worked a crowd at the opening of a local community event across the road from my house sticks out. As my friends and I looked on, Charlie leaned down to a child - a young boy, I think - whose family he might or might not have known.
To the general amusement and guffawing of hangers on and entourage, he held up a 50p piece and, with a Charlie flourish, handed it to the child. "Remember to tell your mammy and daddy who gave you that," he said. We all wanted one.
That was around the time of the 1981/1982 elections - that time of great upheaval in Irish politics. The flurry of elections, even if I didn't understand what was going on, was exciting.
Even if you were barely entering your teens you could sense the significance of events, of the importance for the country of what was going on behind the election campaigns and the gates of Leinster House. I remember the absurd 'tax on children's shoes' issue, that brought down the Garret FitzGerald government in early 1982.
I remember, during what seemed like endless election campaigning in a two-year period, the cars painted in the logos of Fianna Fáil - the Republican Party. The dour face of Charlie Haughey was plastered on the side of some of them, the megaphone blasting out urges to come out and vote or to "Arise and Follow Charlie".
I remember the tensions surrounding the Maze hunger strikes, the black flags draped from some homes in sympathy with Sands and his compatriots. There was simplistic discussion of the issues, more detailed political discussion I didn't understand. I remember overhearing venomous things of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher during that time, but again not really understanding what it was all about.
I remember the leafleting, the dozens of pieces of paper that came through the door during that period - was it more than now? Seems it was. I remember politicians, Haughey amongst them, were still allowed to stand right outside the polling stations as people went in to vote. The last leaflets would be pressed into palms outside the school in Donnycarney where my parents voted. Hundreds of them littered the ground outside, dropped by those who had cast them away in disgust or, more likely, in the good Irish littering tradition.
Every child on the street was aware of what a controversial figure Charlie was - even if they couldn't quite tell you why. They absorbed, without knowing it, the parental propaganda (no, not in our house!) about why he was 'good' or 'bad' about what he'd done for the country or what he hadn't done. They heard the stories about how a letter to Charlie could get you a telephone - this at a time when it was common to wait years for such a luxury, until the then Post and Telegraphs people would deign to connect you.
In later years, when I started working, I'd wait at the bus stop on the Malahide Road every morning at around 9.30am - late again.
Charlie's routine as taoiseach took him into Leinster House from Kinsealy at around that time most mornings. He'd whizz past in his ministerial Merc, his Special Branch protection following on his bumper in a blue Ford Granada. He always had newspapers or other documents in front of him as he sped on his seven or eight-mile journey to Kildare Street.
It's the little Charlie memories that strike me now, as someone who was a very young constituent during his tenure in Dublin North Central. I was, at one point, certainly old enough to vote for him. I never did.
On one Sunday afternoon, I stood collecting for the Order of Malta outside Marino church. It must have been during an election campaign. My memory is that Fine Gael's Michael Keating, who attended O'Connell Schools with my father and was later to become involved in controversies of his own, canvassed outside the church on the same occasion. Perhaps it was during his stint as Lord Mayor of Dublin. Either way, there were little gaggles of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael supporters outside the church on Griffith Avenue.
Charlie was greeted with what must have been hundreds of slaps on the back, hundreds of the big-grin-pumping-handshake greetings he was so used to in his own backyard. He loved it, returned all the greetings, remembered many faces.
There were the 'howiya Charlie' winks and nods from the big men with bad comb-overs, the fluttering eyelashes from women in their Sunday best. They accepted his election leaflets almost with bows and curtsies.
One elderly woman, however, wasn't having Charlie's leaflet. She thrust it back in his hand. "Go and wipe your a*** with it," she spat. I hope his friends and family, at a sad time for them, would laugh at that because it's not meant with disrespect.
Charles Haughey attracted extremes of emotion. May he rest in peace.