"BY GOSH it was hard," said Paul Murphy, the former Northern secretary, with feeling, as he reminisced with the class of '98 on how the Belfast Agreement was achieved 10 years ago yesterday, writes Gerry Moriarty,Northern Editor
Bertie Ahern, George Mitchell, John Hume, Gerry Adams, Reg Empey, John Alderdice, Monica McWilliams and the others who were in the BBC studios in Belfast where the Belfast Agreement reunion was held did not agree on everything yesterday, but they agreed with Mr Murphy.
Mr Ahern went further by saying not only was it hard but it was also occasionally "insane".
On his way to Belfast, Mr Ahern's Government jet was hit by lightning during a storm. "It was a right old jolt," said one official. This was the second time this happened to the Taoiseach while travelling North for talks. Soon his visits will be social ones and he can travel by car.
Everyone involved in yesterday's symposium, obviously, was 10 years older; many, especially the men, were greyer; but all carried about them a quiet sense of satisfaction about a job well done, about being present in a grim, ugly building at Stormont when the accord was finally struck.
These participants to the talks, and others in the studio such as Liz O'Donnell, David Adams, Mark Durkan, Dawn Purvis, Gen John de Chastelain and David Andrews, reflected for two hours on how the agreement was finally forged. There was not much looking to the future; most of the discussion was about Good Friday 1998 itself, or the preceding days when no one knew whether agreement was possible.
You got a sense that here were politicians or ex-politicians who remained surprised that what they established actually worked. You got a sense too of how tense, stormy and almost life-sapping was the period leading up to Good Friday.
The Taoiseach did not publicly confirm the story that at one stage of the talks he was minded to take a swing at David Trimble because he was so rude, but he confirmed there were some "right ding-dongs" with some people "losing their heads" but returning the following day, "sane again". He had good memories of and high regard for the negotiators.
There was a simple humanity about yesterday's symposium, and as with all reunions there were some absent friends remembered with affection.
Monica McWilliams recalled the late Mo Mowlam, the Northern secretary in 1998 who even then was diagnosed with cancer, running around Castle Buildings in the final crucial hours of the talks "with no wig, a drip in her arm for the pain", trying to coax and jolly the disputing parties into doing the deal.
Mark Durkan remembered 6am on Good Friday morning and his SDLP colleagues tucking into bacon rolls in the canteen. "Hey fellows, this is Good Friday," he reminded his good Catholic colleagues who immediately laid down the rolls. Then David Ervine walked in.
"Typical Catholics," Ervine thundered. "They couldn't eat their bacon rolls but they still took a bite out of them so the Prods couldn't get at them."