UKRAINE:Beneath the broad trees that line Lviv's main boulevard, the old men played on, regardless. Nothing interrupted their chess or their dominoes: not the falling chestnuts that bounced around them nor the sensory bombardment of a Yulia Tymoshenko campaign rally.
At one end of the boulevard stands Lviv's grand opera house, at the other, the square that was taken over yesterday by Tymoshenko's final appeal to voters in her western Ukrainian stronghold to deliver victory in Sunday's general election.
If the old men had looked up from their games, they would have seen a huge stage flanked by screens and loudspeakers, fluttering banners and booths handing out Yulia merchandise to all - from toddlers to pensioners - in this city of 650,000 people.
Her party's symbol, a red heart on a white backdrop, was everywhere, on flags, T-shirts, stickers, postcards, balloons and, until a tousled rocker in a white suit appeared to warm up the crowd, it was displayed on screens that glowed through the mist.
Tymoshenko would cut a striking figure on any political scene, let alone the turgid post-Soviet stage, and she has presence to match her looks.
Her speech in Lviv, delivered in a voice husky from weeks on the hustings, was clear, impassioned and witty, in contrast to the dry and sometimes dithering efforts of President Viktor Yushchenko and the monotonous drone of prime minister Viktor Yanukovich.
Tymoshenko focused on deriding Yanukovich's Regions Party - which leads opinion polls on the back of overwhelming support in largely Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine - and calling for a ruling alliance with Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party.
"With one voice, we must vote against this anti-Ukrainian party, these anti-Ukrainian politicians," said Tymoshenko of the bloc led by Yanukovich, who capitalised on disputes among his rivals to bounce back from defeat in the 2004 "Orange Revolution".
Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were at loggerheads after he fired her from the post of prime minister and eventually accepted Yanukovich as her replacement - but she vowed yesterday to do her utmost to forge a working alliance with the president.
She also vehemently denounced suggestions that Yushchenko's party could form a "grand coalition" with the Regions Party, something she said would be a betrayal of the Orange Revolution, which overturned Yanukovich's fraudulent election "victory".
Tymoshenko attributed the orange team's shambolic post-revolution efforts to govern to "too much political optimism and romanticism", but asked for another chance with an imprecation for "everyone who loves Ukraine to unite as one team".
However, as dozens of white- and-red balloons swirled up over Lviv, and Tymoshenko waved her goodbyes, many people left for home still weary of Ukraine's politics.
"We were all for Yushchenko and Tymoshenko in 2004, but nothing improved," said Roman (44) who refused to give his surname.
"Our politicians promise everyone the earth but, when they get power, they just squabble among themselves."