Times marches on and here we are in the month of August in Brian Faulkner's coconut colony, alias Neverland, not-an-inch further on politically with the few leaders now away sunning themselves on foreign beaches, chucking water balloons at each other.
It's the tired old blame game or deja vu all over again.
It all started in far-off Boston where Gerry Adams warned that if the unionists persist in their waffling about the peace process then the two governments must proceed along an all-Ireland path to implement all other elements with both London and Dublin being held accountable.
The unionists who have retreated to their new east Belfast headquarters having sold their notorious Glengall Street headquarters for a king's ransom, immediately dubbed this 'Adams Plan B'.
"We are not the dealbreakers you are" Michael McGimpsey said, having been left in charge while Trimble is on holiday.
He alleged that Sinn Féin was now admitting it could not honour what it had signed up to.
McGimpsey's last words were interesting. "The agreement is the only show in town" he said.
In Boston, Adams had put it differently.
He said: "The two governments need to make it clear that for unionism the Good Friday Agreement is as good as it gets."
With Paisley absent from the scene (where is he?), Punt Robinson chucked his own water balloon.
He said that with Trimble and co fading from the scene the republicans had lost their golden goose.
Things will never be the same again but the DUP would stick to any deal that it does!
Meantime the nationalist community had to start the learning process that no proposal will endure without the support of the DUP.
Oh Peter! Do we sleep or do we dream?
Imagine the nationalists signing up to a return of the good-old-bad days with the Ayotallah as supremo in Tom Tiddler's land!
Finally into the picture comes the voice of reason, from SDLP Leader, Mark Durkan. The truth, he said, was that continued IRA activity has turned pro-agreement unionists off and given a penalty kick to the wreckers of the DUP.
That was why Sinn Féin should be doing more to play its part in ending paramilitarism instead of talking of Plan B.
Meantime back at the ranch. I mean Number 10 Downing Street... Tony Blair – still up to his neck in the bother over the Iraq War and the activities of his kitchen cabinet – decided to face an overall news conference in which he claimed that he was looking forward to a third term as PM adding that "my appetite for the job is undiminished".
He mentioned Norn Iron but his tabloid tormentors were totally uninterested in the lost colony where tourist interests are nearly demented over the latest US-based Rough Guide to such delectable holiday traps as flag-bedecked Portadown, Larne, Lisburn city and Ballymena.
But Blair was still cagey about an autumn election.
"We need to work hard for the breakthrough the vast bulk of the people want... the dangers and difficulties remain," he said.
You can say that again. The dissident idiots, green and orange, are still at the old game of intimidation. Pipe bombs, threats and hoaxes, tying up traffic and generally making nuisances of themselves.
The Stormont parliament remains empty except for an occasional semi-detached ex-MLA conducting a lonely press conference in the main hall.
The British Labour strangers are still running the show on a part-time basis wondering when the natives will wake up to realise that their politicians are conceding that nanny at Westminster knows best!
The Scots and the Welsh are getting on with it but the Ulster-Scots politicians, deep down suffer from this inferiority complex.
They are great at marching, protecting and kicking up hell but no good at ruling.
So it's direct rule until Tib's Eve.
