History moves on from the overthrow of the tyranny of Baghdad to the happy entry of 10 new states to the European union in Athens, the birthplace of democracy.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern were there for the celebrations but their thoughts must have been elsewhere in that unhappy corner of Ireland, the sceptred isle of the poets, where their hopes and our hopes of the new beginning promised five years ago on Good Friday remain nailed to the cross of suspicion and ill-will.
While the new states look forward to a new era of prosperity in the wealthy European club, old sourpuss Ulster backtracks doggedly to Tom Tiddler's Land, going nowhere in particular, while its politicians collect their salaries and tell their constituents: "Don't worry. the Brits will look after you?"
But the strangers from Westminster have their own constituents in the 'mainland' to think about and their job is simply a holding one, until Tib's eve when Trimble and company finally wake up and realise that nobody gives a damn about their attendance in the British House of Commons, nodding their heads about GB affairs that don't concern them.
What people are worried about is the unfinished business which these worthies have left behind during their short-lived posturing in the Stormont assembly.
What did they actually achieve that anyone remembers?
I can think of only two items, the abolition of the 11-plus by Martin McGuinness and the successful handling of the foot-and-mouth crisis by Brid Rodgers.
While Trimble and his no-men play the old game of the IRA bogeymen – and Sinn Féin falls into that trap endlessly with the aid of its mythical spin-doctor Mr P O'Neill – the long-suffering inhabitants of this benighted corner of what used to be the province of Ulster are left wondering when will normality ever return?
By normality they mean the end to murder gangs, loyalist pipe bombing, attacks on churches and schools, vandalism by drunken youths, loyalist 'turf wars', robberies of isolated pensioners, coat-trailing Orange marches and glue-sniffing joyriders.
While the humbug about policing goes on featuring political wiseacres like Sammy Wilson the television shows a dozen police searching for clues at notorious trouble spots like Belfast Waterworks the morning after an attack on a young girl by a gang of 10.
Where were the police when the gang congregated?
Will the new police chief Hugh Orde switch back to crime prevention by patrolling on foot instead of flashing past in cars?
That's where it all went wrong – playing up to the statisticians, recording only crime detection and forgetting about the deterrent of a police presence.
Orde should organise an urgent trip
to New York and report back on the transformation there brought about by the mayor's 'zero' tolerance on crime.
When Sir John Stevens presented his shocking report on the army and police collusion in the murder of Catholics here during the so-called 'dirty war', including the assassination of the prominent solicitor Pat Finucane, we relived that nightmare of the 1980s.
Here was the naked truth stranger than fiction.
The government of the day stooping to the depths and using loyalist murderers,
informers and double agents to engage
in grisly counter-terrorism making no distinction between innocent victims or otherwise.
Thirty persons have been named and face prosecution.
One of them, the top man in charge of the army unit involved, Brigadier Gordon Kerr, turned up in the British embassy in Beijing of all places and was pictured closing the door in the face of a BBC interviewer.
But the story does not end there.
A judicial inquiry has been called for which could reveal who ordered Kerr and his cloak-and-dagger gang to collude with local killers.
Was it at cabinet level?
As this appalling story rumbles on there is no knowing where it will end.
Meantime the dissolution of the truant Stormont assembly looms like a bad dream.
New words for an old song come to mind:
'Who fears to speak of election week' and a poll which could result in confusion worse confounded?
