Northern Editor, went on the road with UUP leader David Trimble and his entourage IT WAS the best of campaigns, it was the worst of campaigns. The best of campaigns - so far - for the No people; the worst for advocates of a Yes vote on Friday next.
David Trimble took to the road yesterday and this reporter can testify that the sun shone wherever he went.
His enemies will claim the two events were coincidental but UUP sources will no doubt say it was the first indication that the unseen powers guiding all our destinies had decided to give the Yes people a break.
There is now a de facto Popular Front for the Agreement and, like its counterparts in the 1930s, the PFA embraces everybody from aristocrats to revolutionaries.
Yesterday the PFA rolled into Stroke City, the non-controversial name for "Derry/Londonderry". The aristocracy, in the person of Viscount Robert Cranborne, opposition leader in the British House of Lords, could be seen trying a Yes T-shirt for size.
But this wasn't a tale of T-shirt politics as practised in our student days. This was strictly a story for grown-ups.
You might call it "A Tale of Two Roberts" because his lordship had come partly to counter the influence of No campaign spokesman Bob McCartney.
The viscount's unionist credentials are impeccable. He recalled with no false modesty that he was one of "those 27 heroes" who voted against the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement at Westminster - and would do so again today.
The subtext was: if this man is urging a Yes vote, then it must be OK. One couldn't help recalling the famous motto of the Treaty era: "If it's good enough for Mick Collins, it's good enough for me." Another component of the Popular Front was the Labour backbencher, Ms Kate Hoey, who has been so prominent in this campaign she may not be a backbencher much longer.
She had supported Mr McCartney in the past, but insisted Bob was "just plain wrong" this time and was saying "quite ridiculous things".
What the politicians said may have been important but the real message lay in the image. Mr Trimble posed with his two friends on Derry's Walls, with the Bogside in the background.
Under this agreement, he claimed, even the Bogside was "as British as Bangor or Bournemouth".
That won't win any republican or nationalist votes, especially since this was the site of the time-honoured custom of Apprentice Boys throwing pennies down at their nationalist neighbours.
But this wasn't about winning nationalist votes: they are supporting the agreement anyway. The task was to reassure dithering unionists, those who plead, a la St Augustine, "Make me a No voter, but not yet."
That's why a Saatchi and Saatchi-type moment was needed on the walls.
There was nearly another moment that would have had Saatchi and Saatchi jumping off the walls in despair. Mr Trimble recalled that his ancestors were in the Siege of Derry in 1689 and someone pointed out a Trimble grave in the nearby cemetery - named after St Augustine as it happened. The UUP leader was heading straight for the spot when friends frantically intervened: "Don't do it, David."
He wheeled around, much to the disappointment of a waiting photographer: "You've just ruined my caption."
On then to Ballymena, where Mayor James Currie, who has stood with the beleaguered churchgoers of Harryville, was on hand to greet the Trimble group. There was one dissident: Mr William Wright, a local UUP councillor, made his points trenchantly for the No campaign.
But some of the Harryville churchgoers had come along to lend their support for a Yes.
The Yes people are focusing on the "Yoof" vote, so Ballyclare High School was the next stop. Sixth-formers there had voted two to one against the agreement but they gave the Popular Front a polite hearing.
At the end there were questions, led off by "Johnny at the back there". Afterwards, two young pupils promised to influence their parents in favour of a Yes vote. But another girl was sceptical about the whole gig: "I wondered why, basically."
Tonight at the Waterfront Hall the Popular Front extends its embrace to include John Hume and Bono of U2, standing shoulder to shoulder with David Trimble.
What will they sing? Certainly not Sunday Bloody Sunday, and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For would be seen as an admission of defeat.
Perhaps they will do a special number for Jeffrey Donaldson and Lord Molyneaux: With or Without You.