IT WAS the Great Stormont LockOut. Instead of Big Jim Larkin we had Green Gerry Adams. Instead of proximity talks we had a Mexican stand off. Instead of well oiled diplomacy and finely tuned political handling we had a right royal cock up.
Sinn Fein showed yet again that it is master of the symbolic gesture. About 11.45 a.m. a fleet of cars arrived and the Sinn Fein leadership emerged and advanced as a body on the gates of Castle Buildings in the grounds of Stormont, designated location for the talks.
It was an all star turnout the two Gerrys, Adams and Kelly, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty and Lucilita Bhreatnach, among others.
They came to a halt at the wire mesh gates and within three short minutes transformed themselves from political pariahs into masters of the media universe.
They had a lot of help from the powers that be. Two hapless civil servants had been detailed to inform Mr Adams and his friends that they couldn't come in.
Who gave this lamentable advice? One imagines some faceless bureaucrat who has never even gone on community radio. Mr Adams and his friends are on television every day and they knew how this would "play" on screens all over the world.
The Sinn Fein leader spoke in measured tones, faltering only when the officials indicated they were speaking on behalf of both governments. The media scrum behind him grew more excited a bleak cold day was yielding a hot story.
The civil service "flak catchers" repeated their mantra as Adams pressed his case. It was all very theatrical and "tellyvisually" of benefit to the media, he said, but Sinn Fein was a serious political party with a democratic mandate.
The "killer line" in Mr Adams's attempt to gain entry was "We're being denied the right to go in and talk about peace." That's the one the world's media would pick up.
He said his party had helped to create and sustain the peace process and now the two governments were treating Sinn Fein voters as second class citizens.
Adams finished on a note of finely honed contempt when he told the men in suits that he knew they were "only acting here as messenger boys".
He found it "strange" that they said they were representing the Irish Government as well as the British. More will be heard on that score.
Seasoned journalists shook their heads afterwards and wondered why the republicans couldn't have been admitted to an ante room where some bureaucrats could have served them tea and buns and listened sympathetically to their views. They might have created a scene but it would have been out of microphone and camera range.
The rest of the day was an anticlimax. Patrick Mayhew, Dick Spring, John Hume and Gary McMichael gave separate press conferences but it was clear they were all suffering from PPF (Peace Process Fatigue). The "Adams Family"had rained on their parade.
The main unionist parties didn't turn up at all and it was odd to see republicans knocking on the gates of Stormont while Orangemen stayed away.
With four parties inside and one outside, one wag dubbed the occasion "Four Arrivals and a Lockout."