Constituency profile: Deaglán de Bréadún reports from Portadown on the battle for Upper Bann
David Trimble is walking up the path to knock on a constituent's front door.
This could be his last battle, and there is something oddly moving about the sight of the UUP leader making his solitary way towards an uncertain welcome.
The orthodox historical view is that Trimble led his community into the Promised Land of peace and reconciliation when he signed up to the Belfast Agreement. Never mind that he appeared full of doubts and hesitations himself at the time, he took the risk and signed on the dotted line.
But there's no gratitude in politics and certainly not in Portadown. Far from being greeted with hosannas, Trimble is desperately fighting for his political life. He has tried to make the point that Northern Ireland is as stable and peaceful as any other place in Europe and that credit is due to himself and his party for this achievement.
Wasted words: nobody is listening. The anti-agreement forces are in militant mood; the pro-agreement people apathetic and uncertain. Always at his best under pressure, Trimble proved in the past he had at least nine political lives, but even well-wishers feel he may have used up his quota at last.
The UUP leader gets a mixed reception at the "blue-rinse" Kernan area of Portadown. Reporters accompanying candidates on an election canvass frequently get the sense that the whole thing has been carefully stage-managed in advance, with joyous supporters rushing to embrace their hero, but Trimble would never stoop to such a stratagem and, as a no-nonsense Ulsterman, he wouldn't be very good at it anyway.
His Democratic Unionist Party opponent, affable gospel-singing Orangeman David Simpson, has forecast that Upper Bann will be "under new management" after the election. Trimble laughs: "The DUP are good at talking, they are not much good at real politics."
The unionist vote in Portadown is badly split, and this is reflected on the doorsteps. Asked if she would be voting for Trimble, a housewife responded: "Oh yes, he's great!" But another woman barely opened the door to declare, with nervous politeness: "I vote for another party." There were no prizes for guessing which one.
An ex-policeman didn't even come to the door: "You sold us out!" But another man, drinking a cup of tea outside his house, told reporters his vote for Trimble was "guaranteed".
Trimble is at bay, and the DUP knows it. The mood in the Paisley camp is buoyant and bullish. To make a point, the DUP held its manifesto launch in Trimble's own constituency, at the remote but scenic location of the Edenmore Golf and Country Club, near the village of Magheralin.
High good humour would be an understatement to describe the mood of "the Doc" and his followers, many of them fairly recent defectors from the UUP.
It was a long way from the panicky desperation of Paisley and his followers when they arrived at Castle Buildings on that dramatic April night seven years ago, in a last-ditch effort to block the Belfast Agreement. Even their website is known as www.dup2win.com as the party has never shied away from triumphalism.
Negative speculation about Paisley's health simply does not stand up to the sight of the man, who has just turned 79 but looks as sprightly and robust as ever.
Taking a turn on the canvass at Dollingstown with the party candidate, Paisley is greeted like a rock star. "It's lovely to see you! Golly, this is a surprise, so it is," says Margaret Hall, at a doorway in Gilpin Park.
Even the kerbstones around here are a loyal red-white-and-
blue. But a well-dressed woman packing her kids into the family car on Regency Avenue tells Paisley she won't be voting DUP even though her mother-in-law once worked for the party leader. She said she was voting Green but didn't know the candidate's name. In fact, the Greens aren't running in Upper Bann.
The only thing that can save Trimble at this stage, according to the pundit class, is the moderate Catholic and Alliance Party vote.
But the Alliance is running its own candidate this time; self-styled "young gun" Alan Castle bounds from door to door with a zeal and enthusiasm that contrasts with the measured pace of his canvassing team.
On the nationalist side, Sinn Féin polled better than the SDLP in the last Westminster elections. At the Sinn Féin office in Lurgan, former chef John O'Dowd is cooking up an election plan with his team.
Better known as chairman of the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, Breandan Mac Cionnaith is now working as political adviser to Sinn Féin. He is deeply sceptical at the prospect of nationalists "lending" their votes to Trimble. "He didn't convince people he was 100 per cent pro-agreement."
The Lurgan headquarters of the SDLP is, poignantly, across the street from the office of the murdered solicitor Rosemary Nelson whose death is the subject of a public inquiry which opened this week.
The vivacious SDLP standard-bearer is Dolores Kelly, former mayor of Craigavon and the only woman candidate. The Workers' Party is fielding one of its best-known faces, Tom French, on a platform of class unity: not a tune that tops the charts in the heartland of Orangeism.
Despite a lingering suspicion that "Teflon Trimble" will, in the words of one observer, "magic it again", the balance of probability is that the DUP will get its revenge on Trimble at last.