The old cliche is that a week is a long time in politics. Election week is more like the longest day.
Here in Islington, all the work of the last weeks and months of building up support for Brian Paddick and our assembly candidate Meral Ece is coming to its peak tomorrow.
So many people are genuinely undecided about their votes this time, that there's a sense we have everything to play for. The last few days have been a flurry of activity; sourcing printer cartridges, organising polling day rotas, delivering letters to voters, handing out flyers at the tube station.
And across the country wherever we have elections it will be the same. So spare a thought for the volunteers of all parties on eve of poll struggling to cope with all the lastminute crises in the service of democracy.
I remember elections 20 years ago, when the last day was spent hand-writing lists of supporters to "knock up" on polling day. Thankfully those days are long gone, polling day these days are all very hi-tech with computers set up in all our election day HQs or "committee rooms".
Noble souls are giving up their homes for the day as bags of leaflets, plus essential stocks of everything from biscuits to toner arrive. It can sound a bit like Cluedo - "It's Rod with Carrie's laptop in Pauline's kitchen" - but no one's been murdered, yet.
Paddy Ashdown used to tell the story of how he visited a constituent whose home had been flooded. After having a cup of tea and listening to the long history of their case, Paddy realised he was desperate to go to the loo. Finally he asked if he could use their facilities, yanked the old-fashioned chain with relief - and pulled the cistern off the wall, flooding them again.
I've never had an experience quite like that. Or not until this week. I was canvassing with one of our councillors, and we called on a lady who wanted to show us a problem in her flat. We duly went into the basement and were checking it out when suddenly the smoke alarm went off.
There was a pan simmering on the gas hob, and the roll of kitchen towel nearby had gone up in flames. One damp tea towel and the fire was out; no damage done.
In fact, our host insisted she was delighted we'd called and we all had a nervous laugh about our memorable visit. She even took a Paddick poster. Well he does have a background in the emergency services....
For all our obsession with tomorrow's elections, a majority of voters entitled may not take part. Compulsory voting was one of the issues that came up at a public meeting with Nick Clegg and Brian Paddick that I chaired last night. Our venue was a packed lecture theatre at London Metropolitan University (where I was a student 20 years ago), and the 100 strong audience - a real mix of students, pensioners, a senior quangocrat sitting next to a trades unionist - asked some suitably challenging questions.
No, said Nick; low turnouts are a failure of the political classes. If turnouts are low, politicians need to raise their game, not punish the disengaged further.
We still don't know what the London results will be. It's certainly true that levels of disillusion with Ken Livingstone and Labour are running high; as is skepticism about Boris Johnson's ability to do the mayoral job. One student at the meeting told me his sister knows Boris; she's definitely not voting Tory as a result.
Meanwhile, I've been impressed with how Brian's honest approach reaches out to so many different people - from Duwayne Brooks to newspaper columnists - who are turned off by traditional politics and politicians.
On which note, back to the election trenches!
