There may still be a few weeks to go until both houses return in full session, but activity around here is slowly cranking up. The committees will soon be back and then the pre-election phoney war will start in earnest.
Drapier is therefore cherishing these last few sultry days of relative peace and calm before the long and arduous months ahead. The coming session will be a painful one, especially with the election almost 10 months away.
Michael Noonan's bizarre Beal na Blath peroration indicates that he is preparing not so much to fight an election battle as to restart the Civil War. His raking over of old embers had many of Drapier's Fine Gael colleagues yearning for the good old days of John Bruton and Co, when at least they felt the party was facing the future, not stirring up old enmities.
Drapier knows that Michael Noonan faces a difficult task, but is surprised that Michael repeatedly chooses the wrong strategies. Appealing to the ghosts of the past will not bring the new first-time voters the party so desperately needs if it is to have a chance of getting back into government.
Michael's abstentionist policy towards Bertie's European Forum is another example of learning the wrong lesson from history. Most abstentionists either give up eventually or are made to attend. Anyway, the forum was originally a Labour idea, and many on the Labour benches have not taken too kindly to Michael putting down one of their pet projects.
They see it as a part of Michael's ongoing campaign to put "clear blue water" between the two parties. Michael's occasional sniping at Ruairi Quinn across the chamber falls into this category as well.
Drapier knows that there are those on the Fine Gael back benches who welcome this antidote to what they saw as John Bruton's overly comfortable relationship with Ruairi, but they may come to regret this petulance.
Ruairi is finding it difficult enough to muster sufficient daily levels of outrage and anger at the Government without being deflected to target some at Fine Gael, too.
Michael needs to find wiser counsel. John Bruton may have been guilty of operating an overly large and exclusive kitchen cabinet. Michael runs the risk of doing the exact opposite. He will find that eschewing collective involvement will be his undoing. It's the old hang together or hang separately principle.
Sinn Fein could do with learning this principle, too. The last few weeks have highlighted a fundamental weakness within the organisation. As regular readers will know, Drapier has never subscribed to the "Sinn Fein is on an unstoppable march to political domination" theory that some in the media peddle. Sinn Fein is not politically omnipotent as the events of the past few weeks, especially Sinn Fein's response to them, amply prove.
The clumsy and ham-fisted response of some of their second-line people to both the police reform package and the Colombia debacle showed how large the gap behind Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness really is.
Sinn Fein is almost completely dependent on both of them for ideas and considered responses. There seem to be very few other people within the party who are graced with the ability to think on their feet.
Notwithstanding their careful positioning of new faces and new candidates, there is a wide gulf in ability between the senior and intermediary leadership in Sinn Fein.
While the likes of Gerry Kelly and Alex Maskey can appeal to and stir up the emotions of their traditional supporters in the North, there are precious few, outside of Adams and McGuinness, who have the ability to appeal to new voters here in the South.
The slogans and mantras that work in the North will not work well in the South, especially in the absence of any major leadership figures here.
A colleague of Drapier's recently observed that Sinn Fein's membership in the South fell into three categories:
The traditional long-standing members, who can be identified by a profusion of tattoos.
The newer breed, the political ambitious, readily identified by the Marks & Spencer business suits, neat hair and absolute absence of tattoos whatsoever.
The ones who would like to be in category 2 and to this end have had their tattoos removed by laser.
As Drapier's colleague added, the friction between categories 1 and 2 is increasingly palpable.
Sinn Fein is overly reliant on the twin leadership of Adams and McGuinness to an even greater degree than the SDLP was dependent on John Hume and Seamus Mallon. The SDLP has people of the calibre of Alex Attwood, Mark Durkan and Denis Haughey who can think and debate constructively. Sinn Fein, it increasingly appears, does not.
Sinn Fein is a party of crisis. It needs a crisis to thrive and survive. It is uniquely a party of constitutional issues. It has neither developed nor defined any clear policy platforms outside of the national question. It is avowedly euro-sceptic and, we presume, economically socialist. But beyond that we have no pointer to where it stands on the bread-and-butter issues of the day.
When it comes to law and order, it has no vested interest in seeing the policing issue resolved. Indeed it is quite the opposite. It needs the RUC to remain unreformed if it is to make electoral progress.
This contrasts with the SDLP's principled position. The SDLP has secured a package of reforms that amounts to Patten. Sinn Fein, meanwhile, sits on the sidelines and carps.
It could be said that Sinn Fein has been trying the same tactic in the South by stirring up bad feeling toward the Garda in various areas. Drapier recognises an old Trotskyite tactic when he sees it and he has been seeing it in parts of Dublin and Kerry.
The party has attempted to identify itself with the anti-drugs movement in various urban centres. This has brought it some success at the last local elections, particularly in Dublin.
So how does Sinn Fein resolve its stated opposition to drugs here with some of its associates assisting FARC, a terrorist group funded by drugrunning? The party has been singularly incapable of answering the question.
As Drapier has said, politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Drapier's contacts in the North tell him that the next few weeks will see extremists on both sides fanning the flames of discontent. The focus for this unrest will be in north Belfast where loyalists intend to expand the schools blockade started before the summer. Doubtless, republicans will respond and the whole cycle will continue.
While these flashpoints are impossible to ignore, we must not lose sight of the big picture. Sinn Fein and those in the republican movement have made commitments and now must honour them. This is the time for long-term strategies not short-term tactics.
An Assembly election might see Sinn Fein repeat the gains it made at Westminster, but it would also see the DUP do likewise. Whose interests does this serve? Not the people's. Drapier is still hopeful, but it will be a long and possibly painful wait.