America's only national newspaper, USA Today, asked The Northern Echo's Political Editor Chris Lloyd to give it an insight into today's visit to Sedgefield. This is his article which has been edited in the US for an American audience.

SEDGEFIELD, England. There will be protests. And people in this North-Eastern area are happily exercising the right to free speech that President Bush has applauded during his state visit.

But residents of Prime Minster Tony Blair's home district also admit to a shiver of excitement at the prospect of a visit from the leader of the world's most-powerful country.

At the school gate, when news of the visit first broke, a parent asked: "Is it true? Is it really true that the president of the United States is landing at our airport down the road?"

It's not as if the locals haven't had their share of the national or international spotlight.

Since Tony Blair became leader of the Labor Party in 1994, his constituents have grown used to seeing huge broadcast trucks, each with enough satellite technology to put a man on the moon, rumbling down their country lanes.

They are accustomed to TV camera lights and being asked their opinions of Blair's performance by reporters from across Europe.

Other world leaders have sampled the Sedgefield experience. Among them: France's Lionel Jospin and Jacques Chirac. And according to local lore aimed at illustrating how blas townspeople have become, a few years ago the bartender at the Labour Club answered the phone, waved the receiver and yelled: "Is there a Blair in the room?"

"Yes," replied the Prime Minister. "It's me."

"Phone," said the barman. "Bloke called Clinton. Says he wants a word with you."

But this will be something completely new, as up to 600 journalists and 250 armed Secret Service agents trail Bush's every move today.

Bush is expected to fly in for lunch at Blair's Myrobella House, in Trimdon Colliery. One secret service agent in the advance party caused great amusement here by asking, "How many acres has Mr Blair got?" If he was expecting something along the lines of the 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch, in Texas, where Bush entertained Blair, he was in for a disappointment. Blair's agent, John Burton, blushed and replied: "Well, he's got a back garden and a shrubbery."

Myrobella is a modest two-storey Victorian brick-built home. It sits behind a long line of former coalminers' homes, its driveway concealed by a hairdresser's red and white pole.

Inside, there's a powder blue aga in the kitchen. But the dining room has been converted into a secretary's office. A giant photocopier dominates the living room.

Outside, there is a lawn just about big enough for a child-sized soccer net. But that leaves barely enough room for Blair's three-year-old son, Leo, to take a run before kicking the ball. The shrubbery mentioned by Burton consists of a handful of myrobella plum trees that give the house its name.

the rolling hills that surround the area have for most of the past 700 years been the source of the main local livelihood: coalmining. The last working pit in the constituency, Fishburn, closed in 1974. When Blair campaigned in the mid-1980s to keep the dirty, smoky Fishburn Cokeworks open, he was taken aback by the response.

"I remember in 1986 a local councilor coming to me and saying, 'It's very good of you to do all this, but the people are fed up with factory'," Blair told me earlier this year, for an article to commemorate the 20th anniversary of his election.

It was as if the people of Sedgefield wanted a new way of life, and it was one of the things that convinced Blair that the Labor Party had to be re-branded as "New Labor" - it was part of "the third way" experiment that he used to chat to Bill Clinton about by phone over a pint in the Labor Club.

This time, though, the US president is coming in person, and the place is a-buzz - and not just with the sound of helicopters circling the constituency.

The people of Sedgefield thought they were used to high levels of security, what with the contingent of guards bristling with automatic weapons stationed at Blair's gate. (Police are rarely armed in Britain).

But when two huge Black Stallion Sikorsky helicopters, followed by two more bearing the official US seal, dropped out of the sky on Monday and flew low over the trees to land on the playing field beside Blair's house, residents realised this was going to be a new experience.

"The whole street was filled with people staring into the sky," said Ben Fletcher, 67, who was working in his nearby allotment when the helicopters performed a dry run for today's visit. "Nothing like this has happened in Trimdon before."

People just stopped and stared as, on Tuesday, security men started dismantling the centre of the village of Sedgefield. All the sewers were checked and sealed, every lamp-post was de-constructed and sealed, and the Dun Cow pub suddenly had its kitchen ripped out and replaced. Although Mr Bush is travelling with four chefs, it would appear that Mr Blair is taking him for a pub lunch.

"The mood is one of excitement," said vice-chairman of the Sedgefield Labor Party Lucy Hovells. "We have the two most important people in the world coming to us. No one would otherwise know where Trimdon is."

Indeed, Bush will put Sedgefield on the international map.

Before Blair became the local representative to parliament (or MP), even many Britons were hard-pressed to locate this constituency of 64,000 people.

Before Blair, Sedgefield's most famous inhabitant was "the pickled parson". According to legend, he died many centuries ago, a week before his parishioners were due to pay their annual rent. His shrewd widow pickled his body in salt, propped him in his favorite armchair and popped his pipe in his mouth. The parishioners noticed nothing amiss as they handed over their dues to her. The following day, with her pockets full of money, she announced tearfully that her husband had died.

The pickled parson was so outraged by her behavior that his ghost is still said to be staging a protest, haunting the old rectory in the center of town - which is just over the road from the Dun Cow pub where Mr Bush and Mr Blair may well dine today.

The living will also be protesting today. Like many other Britons, a number of locals oppose the US-led war in Iraq. The rector of Sedgefield, the Reverend Martin King, has called Bush "rapacious".

"One person in my congregation said that if President Bush wanted to look around the church, he would be welcome because it is a place for sinners," said Mr King.

Others will be demonstrating against a fleet of rusting US Navy warships that are beginning to arrive at the port of Hartlepool, 20 miles from here. They were due to be scrapped but the dismantling has been delayed by the courts amid concern they are an environmental threat.

Mayor of Hartlepool Stuart Drummond, who was formerly a monkey-suited mascot for the town's soccer club, was asked to plan an itinerary for Bush's visit.

"I would invite him to join me on the terraces of the football club to watch a game," he said, "and I would finish off by inviting him to take one of his ghost ships back to America."

The protesting pickled parson, possibly Sedgefield's most famous resident until Mr Blair brought Mr Bush along, would surely have approved of such sentiments.