During the interregnum, so to speak, Northern Ireland was ruled by three men and a dog. That was a joke cracked by Peter Mandelson - the reference was to himself, his fellow Northern Ireland Office Ministers, Adam Ingram and George Howarth, and his canine companion, Bobby.
Since suspension on February 11th they did the work of a First Minister and Deputy First Minister, 10 Ministers, two junior Ministers, and the 10 departmental Assembly committees.
At midnight tonight direct rule ends and the restoration begins. David Trimble and Seamus Mallon, with all the panoply of the new regime, will be back in business.
All it took was Mr Mandelson signing a piece of paper at Hillsborough on Saturday. At the witching hour tonight not only will 108 Assembly members have their jobs back but the North-South Ministerial Council and implementation bodies, the British/Irish Council, and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference will be reinstated.
This morning the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon, just a little ahead of the game-plan, will enter Parliament Buildings at Stormont to blow the dust of their desks. In the afternoon, they will jointly meet the press to speak of their plans and aspirations for the brave new future.
By Tuesday all the ministers should be back at their desks, and on Thursday the Executive is scheduled to hold a formal cabinet meeting. We know that present then should be Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon, along with three Ulster Unionist Party and three SDLP ministers, as well as Mr Martin McGuinness and Ms Bairbre de Brun for Sinn Fein.
There could be two vacant seats as well. At the time of writing last night, the DUP appeared to have gone to ground. Virtually all the mobile phones of the senior DUP politicians were switched off and any that were ringing weren't being answered.
Effectively, the DUP has until midnight to decide whether to take its ministries. If it does, it is likely it will be as before - with Mr Peter Robinson, the Regional Development Minister, and Nigel Dodds, Social Development Minister, doing their work but refusing to sit in cabinet with Sinn Fein.
But if the DUP does not take its ministries, the UUP and Alliance will be entitled to a ministry each, under the d'Hondt system of allocating ministries on a system proportional to the strength of each party in the Assembly. The UUP would have first choice, and could opt for either regional development or social development.
The UUP, in such case, would have the option of promoting Mr Dermot Nesbitt from his junior ministry or appointing some other MLA. Front-runners here could be Mr James Leslie, Mr Alan McFarland, Mr Fred Cobain, Mr Danny Kennedy and Mr Esmond Birnie.
Alliance probably would have to decide whether the party leader, Mr Sean Neeson, or his deputy, Mr Seamus Close, should take a ministry.
Civil servants who were answering to the three NIO ministers are returning to their departments today to prepare for the formal resumption of their Assembly ministers tomorrow. Anticipating a positive result at Saturday's Ulster Unionist Council meeting, the departmental permanent secretaries last week engaged in some revision work with the ministers in preparation for the return to power.
"Ministers were briefed and updated on what is happening with their portfolios, so everything should slip back into place pretty smoothly," said one NIO official yesterday.
The 10 departmental committees, where ordinary MLAs scrutinise the work of the ministers and make policy proposals, will also come on stream shortly, the official added.
On the wider institutional front, the other bodies will be up and running from tomorrow. A Dublin government source said that during suspension the North-South Council and the six North-South implementation bodies were "ticking over", with their staffs and their committees still in place.
The return of the Executive and the Assembly will provide them with the green light to crank up into fifth gear. The British/Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference similarly will now return to normal functioning.