The blinds are just being drawn in Glengormley's neatly landscaped Greenhill estate on Friday night as a lonely figure in an immaculate greyish-green suit makes his way up the not insubstantial hill, tightly clutching a pile of campaign leaflets.
"Good evening, Mrs Davidson. I am David Ford, the Alliance candidate in next week's election. Will you be voting at all? You will, that's good. Any chance of voting Alliance? Oh, I wish you could be a bit more definite than that . . . You'll think about it, that's lovely."
A middle-aged woman, who says she has been a life-long Ulster Unionist voter, pledges her support for Mr Ford. "For me as a Protestant, you are the only credible pro-agreement candidate. Mr Burnside has never appealed to me. He sent us this big coloured brochure with everything in it but no mention of the agreement, which is the most important thing to people here."
Mr Ford eagerly discusses what he has just heard with his election aide, who has finally managed to catch up with him. "Given that I am not based in Glengormley, there is a real degree of recognition on the doorstep," he claims.
An almost identical estate on an almost identically steep hill on the other side of Glengormley. It is Saturday afternoon and the rain is coming down in a fine, warm drizzle as the Sinn Fein candidate, Mr Martin Meehan, is doing his rounds.
The residents of Hollybrook Estate are mainly young, upwardly mobile republican families who have moved from working-class areas of north and west Belfast and now feel lost in their newly-found Legoland. "They have built the houses but there are no facilities, no shops, no bus service, no playground for the children. We pay close to u £700 in rates a year and all they are doing is emptying the bins," complains a young father.
Mr Meehan promises to see whether the bus service can get extended so that schoolchildren will not have to walk up the hill in bad weather. The Sinn Fein candidate knows he cannot win Thursday's by-election so the talk on the doorstep centres very much on next year's proposed local government election in which Sinn Fein is hoping to get up to seven councillors in the area. "Make sure yous all register now for next year," he reminds a newly-moved family.
A young mother tells Mr Meehan about her nine-year-old son who still has not made his first communion because his mixed school will not provide special religious instruction for him. "They say we have to go to some other school for that but the wee lad is autistic so he can't cope with change. I have already written to the bishop but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it."
"I will send up our Education Minister, Martin McGuinness, to see you and he will sort that out for you. We haven't got a magic wand but we'll do our best for yous. You are right to stand up for your rights," says Mr Meehan, showing signs of the old fighting spirit.
There is less fighting spirit but more good humour as a group of dark-suited SDLP grandees do their best to convince Antrim town's undecided. It is late Saturday afternoon and the town centre is beginning to empty when the party's candidate, Mr Donovan McClelland, is approached by a middle-aged couple.
"As a Protestant, who is firmly pro-agreement, I find myself seriously looking at the SDLP," the man says. "The UUP have become a totem-pole of a party. They have absolutely no interest in the working classes or in getting things done for local people. In fact their late MP, may he rest in peace, always sent me over to your office when I needed something done locally. I am sick and tired of absent MPs," he tells Mr McClelland.
"Don, I wouldn't vote for you if you paid me," laughs a young man coming out of a nearby carpet shop. "He's only slagging me. I've known him for years and he always comes out for us," Mr McClelland assures his slightly worried-looking aide.
The SDLP man has been criticised by the other candidates for taking a two-week holiday in the middle of the campaign. "It was only five days, it was our 25th wedding anniversary and it was booked long before I knew I was going to be a candidate in this election. I think I owed that to my wife after 25 years of standing by me," he says.
"Who knows, it might even play well with some female voters," adds one of his aides.