President steals the show at Bloom finale

LOOKING more in terror than in bloom, President Mary McAleese stole the show at a Dublin flower festival.

Who needs multi-million euro hanging gardens, when you’ve the president’s array of unusual facial expressions for free? By turns looking startled, scared, bemused and bewildered, Mrs McAleese turned heads at the Bloom festival in Phoenix Park.

Maybe she was looking so shocked because the news had finally reached her of the rumours swirling around Leinster House that her husband Martin’s elevation to the Seanad was a precursor to him running for her job as a cross-party unity candidate in November?

Such talk has been strenuously denied, but clearly something caught the president by surprise as she mingled with the height of horticultural society.

The model of head-of-state seriousness as she hosted the Queen and US president last month, Mrs McAleese was clearly saving up her most exaggerated expressions for her very own blooms day.

Or, maybe it was the thought of the finishing post fast approaching in November, when she can officially come off duty after 14 years which saw her play a central, but subtle, role in the transformation of relations between North and South and across the Irish Sea.

Whatever the reason, celebrity chief Neven McGuire certainly had a big impact on the president when he presented her with goodies at the Bord Bia food village’s summer kitchen.

But at least Mrs McAleese is facing the future with renewed vigour.