Hold the front page: that wasn't really a British-Irish Council session you saw at Dublin Castle yesterday. It was a George Harrison memorial meeting.
Instead of rushing from his limo to the meeting hall with a cursory wave to the press, Tony Blair was cunningly lured in front of the microphones to talk not about Afghanistan or right-wing unionists - but about George, dear George.
"Bertie and myself, we grew up with the Beatles," said Blair. You played the guitar yourself, Prime Minister? "Not like he used to play it."
Bertie spoke as if he and the late Beatle were on first-name terms, and maybe even in the same Fianna Fβil cumann: "George had his Irish connections."
Yes, George was in the air, maybe keeping an eye from a better place. That's why it was unusually bright and clear for a long, cold, lonely winter. Here Comes the Sun could have been written for the occasion: "I feel that ice is slowly melting. . ." The late nationalist leader, Eddie McAteer, aspired to "a little United Nations of these islands". That was how it felt.
Welsh Secretary Rhodri Morgan was there, with the newly famous Jack McConnell from Scotland. The Isle of Man, front-line state in the Sellafield controversy, was represented along with Guernsey and Jersey. There was no sign of the Seigneur of Sark: maybe next time.
The atmosphere was constructive, businesslike, even friendly. David Trimble may not have been on first-name terms with George, but he referred to the Taoiseach as "Bertie". The body language between himself and Mark Durkan was good, too.
Everybody liked everybody. Noel Dempsey posed smiling with Martin McGuinness. It was a little unreal hearing the photographers plead with the Sinn FΘin man to turn around for the cameras: "Minister, Minister!" McGuinness did not seem to register their requests until a Northern journalist shouted a peremptory "Martin!"
We take too much for granted. Trimble was sitting beneath a bilingual sign, "North-South Ministerial Council-Comhairle Aireachta Thuaidh/ Theas" and nobody made a fuss or even noticed. It was all terribly normal, a word Trimble himself kept repeating.
"Normalcy", as a former US president called it, had taken over the peace process, at least for the day.