KEY POINTS:
Helen Clark's full-frontal fall in a Christchurch mall neatly illustrates how she has run this campaign.
She doesn't swear or even whimper - and certainly doesn't want help from her security guards who rarely get close enough to offer any.
Instead Clark, who probably slipped on a piece of fried chicken, was up and over to the next voter so fast most of her 20-strong gaggle of cameramen, journalists and Labour Party stalwarts didn't see it happen.
This is how Clark is heading into the last days of what could well be her last election campaign as Prime Minister.
Despite National's stubborn lead in the polls, despite her own party's fizzer attack on John Key that was supposed to take him out of the race altogether, despite the Owen Glenn documents showing that Winston Peters was trying to get the Monaco job for the wealthy expatriate, Clark trucks on.
Head up, shoulders squared, a permanent smile showing those crooked front teeth, she is like a magnet in the shopping malls of Lower Hutt and Christchurch.
The Prime Minister is especially relaxed with young girls. She shakes their hands, poses cheerfully for phone photos. One of them talks about how they can't stop shaking after talking with her: "She's so cool. It's my dream to meet her!"
Only later do I realise that this is probably a young Labourite here by design rather than accident.
But can this explain the hundreds of young mothers, grandparents and shopkeepers at these Westfield Malls who come up to Clark to wish her good luck? I think not. In middle class Riccarton particularly, students are pleased with this election's policies for allowances unaffected by their National-voting parents' income.
But it is more than policies. In this country where we are short on celebrities, Clark has star status. Her hair is better, especially after she has it done on Mondays. Her pant suits are stylish, her hour in the gym every evening gives her a strong, flexible look. And her demeanour reflects the adulation.
After nine years as Prime Minister, she may look older, but she is also more relaxed. She breaks into groups, smile wide and genuine - and rather than exhausted as you'd expect with an introvert, she seems pumped-up by the experience.
Just once, after hours of it, she shudders slightly, takes a big breath, then stiffens her back, pins on the grin and on she goes: the good ship "Vote Helen".
IF YOU think there is little difference between our two main political parties, a couple of days on the road with Helen Clark opens the eyes. Day one started with a trip by train to Paraparaumu, complete with new policy for widening tunnels, double tracking and modifying trains so allowing containers to be railed directly from the Cook Strait ferry to the top of the north island.
Later that day we're in the Lower Hutt Railway workshops where 200 boiler-suited, greasy faced workers (15 of them apprentices) are stripping and rebuilding ancient locomotives.
This is all part of Clark's plan to keep the country moving should the current recession start to bite. Workshops like this will be expanded, more people employed, but not as many as the 2600 who worked here in the 1930s.
As she says to the 100-odd union members, who might be worried by "how the greedy money traders and speculators have brought the house of cards crashing down," Labour is looking at making work for people like them. "We're looking at a new age for rail. We want to shift the great proportion of freight onto the railway."
A question from the floor about speed restrictions on the main trunk line brings a burst from local MP Trevor Mallard who sits beside her: "It's a disgrace!
Tracks have not been maintained over a long period." Clark and Michael Cullen will get an audit done, take it to cabinet, then work out funding. "In a perverse kind of way the international monetary situation may be helpful," says Clark. "We're looking for more jobs and rail is a very good employer."
And then at the end, as she does at every meeting, especially when she talked to Kapiti Grey Power members who may have been tempted to vote for Winston, Clark asks for votes. She wants both: One for Labour and one for the local candidate. "Keep it Kiwi. Keep it Labour!"
Without actually saying it, she is pleading with them to give Labour a chance to work on its own this time - without being pushed off-course by its coalition partners (and the Greens) as she has been over the past three terms.
Clark works these meetings like a bloody good eye-dog. She sits with her local candidates beside her, both to give them publicity - and if they're a sitting MP, for extra information when she needs it.
First she warms up the audience up with personal greetings, jokes and good news, tells them Labour's grand plan then asks for their votes. When she asks for questions she goads them along: "Who's going to have a go?"And she always stays - briefly - for the cuppa.
Her press secretaries are so confident of her knowledge and political nous they stand at the back half asleep or on the phone organising upcoming visits and policy announcements.
Where they do get involved is during what politicians call "Stand Ups". These are briefings to the journalists who follow her, usually to clarify new policy announcements - but are widely used to ask her anything contentious that might be going on. On Thursday the big story was John Key's involvement in the H-Fee debacle.
Clark wanted to talk about her new Job Search Allowance, the media wanted to know if Labour Party President, Mike Williams, had flown to Melbourne on the taxpayer to research his allegations. "No," Clark assures the media gravely, "we did not pay for Mike Williams." The next day she is forced to back down.
Christchurch means a visit to the Otautahi Runanga in Harewood, with outgoing Christchurch Central MP Tim Barnett and new candidate Brendon Burns. Clark comes here every election. This time it is to a rapturous welcome, beautiful singing and the best jokes so far from upoko [elder] Maurice Grey.
She sits there alongside Grey and a beautiful disabled child, and runs through the achievements: a quality health service, the introduction of the "before school check", which identifies signs of behavioural disorders that stop so many from achieving at school.
Then there's the "one teacher to every 15 new entrants" policy that makes Clark's eyes sparkle with excitement. She talks about how her mother, a teacher, was overwhelmed by the 45 expectant faces looking up at her.
"Now you've got every chance."
Later, when I ask Clark about Labour's reluctance to pay parents and families caring for disabled children, she is concerned but convinced that they are doing the right thing.
"It's harder to deal with than meets the eye. It's a question of where the responsibility for family members begins and ends."
Clark's only tough questions come at Christchurch drillbit maker, Patience and Nicholson. Here among men who work long and hard on grease-slicked floors, her policies of 13 weeks job search allowance and other moves towards middle class welfare, brings a disillusioned question: "I work, my partner works, and we're as broke as people on the bloody dole! What are you going to do for us?"
Clark's soothing response about remembering that Labour gave them industrial law that enables bargaining, Working for Families and the tax breaks, does not seem to satisfy him.
As for dropping GST on food, says Clark, "I prefer Working for Families".
Later, en route to the airport, Clark talks with optimism about her overwhelming popularity in the malls. As she says, the response doesn't stack alongside the polls. Surely they're wrong.
What I didn't like to tell her is what Patience and Nicholson product manager, Glenn Morgan, whispered to me earlier.
He, his boss, and many of their workers may well be voting National.
