North Antrim: The sun is beating down along east Antrim's beautiful coastline. Ian Paisley has discarded his heavy tan woollen overcoat for a fashionable tan cord suit. Hard to imagine that a year ago he appeared to be at death's door.
In Carrickfergus and Larne he is accorded a warm reception. He asks after the voters' health but they are more concerned about his. "Are you keeping all right yourself?" one woman responds solicitously, holding his hand.
"I am keeping the very best. The old fire is still burning," he declares.
Believe it. Dr Paisley plans to be around for a while yet. He shakes hands with a toddler in a buggy. "I hope you'll vote for me when you're 18," he says, adding, "if I live that long, please God."
Dr Paisley is travelling in the DUP's red, white and blue election bus with its very loud and large slogan, "Leadership That's Working", taking in the towns of Carrickfergus, Larne, Ballyclare and Antrim.
The first two towns are in the East Antrim constituency where the DUP's Sammy Wilson is confident of taking the seat from Ulster Unionist outgoing MP Roy Beggs. Ballyclare and Antrim are in South Antrim, where in a tighter battle the Rev William McCrea is hoping to win back his former Westminster seat from the UUP's hardliner, David Burnside.
It's difficult to find Dr Paisley in his own constituency of North Antrim these days. Today he is selling Sammy Wilson and Willie McCrea. He hasn't deserted North Antrim entirely, and like Gerry Adams, stresses that he isn't taking any votes for granted. "I'm getting a great response in my own constituency," he says.
Dr Paisley had a majority of over 14,000 in the last Westminster elections four years ago, and should poll as well again. The SDLP's Seán Farren is competing against Dr Paisley for a Westminster seat for the seventh time and once again will fail.
But like Sinn Féin's Philip McGuigan, Rodney McCune for the Ulster Unionists and Jayne Dunlop for Alliance, Farren's main brief is to keep the SDLP flag flying in the constituency and to work on the chances of his party doing reasonably well in the local elections.
When you've got a vote catcher of Dr Paisley's stature you spread him wide, is the policy of the DUP's engine room team. They know they can get a better return from keeping him pressing the flesh in the marginal constituencies.
In Carrickfergus town centre, Will and Vera Carlisle remind Dr Paisley that it is 35 years since he won his first Westminster seat in a then much larger North Antrim constituency. His main opponent was unionist Harry Clarke, a cousin of then Stormont prime minister, Major James Chichester Clarke. The Carlisles canvassed for Paisley then and have been supporters ever since. "Do you remember the slogan?" says Will. "Make your mark, get rid of Clarke." "And we did," laughs Paisley, who more than a generation on plans to do to David Trimble what he did to many a previous Big House unionist figure. Which is why today the bus and Dr Paisley again will not be in North Antrim but touring Mr Trimble's Upper Bann constituency.
"What he is just counting is the time to the electric chair and the rope," says Dr Paisley of his arch unionist enemy.
Dr Paisley says he hugely enjoyed his recent visit to Dublin for dinner with senior business people. He travelled by car but others such as Peter and Iris Robinson and Jeffrey Donaldson were flown down in the private jet of a Dublin businessman.
"We flew down because we wanted to reduce the amount of time that we would be away from our constituencies in the election," Robinson explains.
Robinson wouldn't say who flew them or what business people were there. "We have no objection if any of them want to say who they were. It was a who's who of business in the Irish Republic, a lot of them with international links," he explains.
The Ulster Unionists last week thought that disclosure of the dinner would damage the DUP because time was when that party supping with anybody in Dublin was a story. But these are changed times and Dr Paisley and the DUP are changing with them.
"I made a very good speech, and was congratulated by everybody in the place," says Dr Paisley. "I don't know when I was received so well, or when I spoke so well." Two large tapestries in the diningroom of the old House of Lords on College Green of the Battle of the Boyne and the Siege of Derry, complete with illustration of the Roaring Meg cannon, made him feel comfortably at home.
"I had the Boyne water behind me, and Roaring Meg in front of me. We got the Boyne water, which was holy water, and Roaring Meg, which was holy smoke," says Dr Paisley.
He would happily go down for another such get together. "This wasn't a one-off thing. I think it will be profitable to us that these folk realise that we are interested in the economy and we want to do something for it."
