IN FISHBURN, a solitary Socialist Labour Party canvasser is pounding the streets. In his jet- black trousers and bright white shoes, with his fluffy peaked cap pulled down tight, he looks like a Harry Enfield comedy character.

"Now I don't think you really wanted to do that," he'd say on the doorsteps. "I don't believe that you wanted to vote New Labour."

Up the road just outside Trimdon, County Durham, a lonely UK Independence Party poster van is parked in a lay-by.

"Who rules Britain - Brussels or London?", it asks the trees as its driver nods off in the mid-morning sun.

In Trimdon Colliery, one man and his wife stroll to cast their votes. Their three children clutch their arms as they walk across the playing field from their house to the polling station.

White daisies and yellow buttercups nod in the breeze as the family passes over them. One of the neighbours pegs out her washing on the line, and four local kids kick a football around the field, unconcerned as the family passes by.

But the country's media, penned in like sheep in the corner of the field, focuses intently on the family. The 24-hour TV news stations have been broadcasting live since sun-up, preparing the nation for this ceremonial family walk.

It is four years since the family last walked this way.

"They're growing up, aren't they?" says their father to a pensioner at the polling booth.

Their mother is wearing red bootleg trousers - "very fashionable", according to the reporters in the pen. The daughter Kathryn, 13, and now clearly a teenager, is wearing salmon pink cropped trousers - "very trendy".

She clings shyly to her father's hand while eldest brother Euan, 17, is more confident, with a daring motif on his flapping shirt. Middle brother Nicky, 15 and strapping, holds on to his mother. The new baby brother, Leo, now one, is back at home in Myrobella House.

Tony Blair, head of the family, is wearing the same outfit as he wore four years ago when he last cast his vote.

The Prime Minister still appears surprised that there is so much interest in him and his family going to vote. He pauses in front of the photographers' pen - 34 of them all snapping away - and looks quizzically at the moustaches made out of gaffer tape that they have stuck to their upper lips. "Why?" he mouths.

"It's on a strictly need-to-know basis," says the head photographer. The Press pack giggles - there is a distinctly end-of-term silliness among them now that their four-week odyssey, shadowing Mr Blair's every move, is nearing its end.

The family disappear into the privacy of the polling station, passing protestor John Hipkin, from Newcastle, who is silently demanding pardons for the 306 soldier boys - most no older than Euan - who were shot at dawn during the First World War for desertion.

Although in this country the ballot is secret, it is safe to assume the name beside which Mr and Mrs Blair put their crosses before they are all whisked away in a string of executive cars.

And so the 2001 General Election campaign comes to a close. The battlebuses, in which Mr Blair and his followers have clocked up about 7,000 miles, are going back.

The photographers and reporters are returning to their hotels to check out. There's only the count at Newton Aycliffe Leisure Centre left for them to cover, and then they'll take the late-night flight to London.

A couple of them pursue Mr Blair into Sedgefield itself, where he is making a private visit to the Labour election office. They arrive just as he's leaving. He breaks his stride to say that he's read the election column in the morning's edition of The Northern Echo and found it "very amusing".

He's swept away again, on another private visit to Newton Aycliffe.

"He just grazed my arm," giggles one of a gang of children in Beveridge Arcade. "He went that way - you just missed him," says a shopkeeper.

All that remains of the vast Prime Ministerial entourage is a couple of canvassers, gamely handing out stickers and leaflets to passers-by.

"Your vote can help Tony win," says a leaflet blowing in the wind in the shopping precinct. "Vote Labour today, until 10pm."

The Prime Minister has vanished, gone to ground. He won't be seen again until his count is called at 1am. At about 3am he'll fly from Teesside Airport to Heathrow for a party/wake (delete as applicable) at Millbank Towers, Labour's London headquarters.

So for one afternoon, and for one afternoon only, he is a father at home with his wife and children. They're hidden away beyond high security fences which are patrolled by armed police and special branch members whispering up their sleeves.

Outside the perimeters of the family house, a nation decides the father's fate.

Read more about Election here.