The former Welsh Secretary, Mr Ron Davies, flew to Dublin last night for a series of meetings with politicians and officials. His two-day trip is significant on at least two counts.
First, it is clearly intended to mark another step on the road to a remarkable political recovery - barely four months after "a moment of madness" on Clapham Common obliged him to resign as Secretary of State and as putative Labour leader of the Welsh assembly.
Second, it underlines the increasing rate of political and diplomatic traffic within "these islands" - both in anticipation of devolution to Scotland and Wales and as part of the Government's commitment to developing east/west relations in the overall context of the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Davies believes his difficulties of last autumn are firmly behind him. "Of course they are. It was a one-off event. What most people seem to forget is that I was actually the victim of a fairly brutal crime."
Moreover, despite the obvious pain he and his family have been through since, he is clearly relishing the prospect of a front-line role in the assembly.
Mr Davies side-steps speculation that his successor, Mr Alun Michael, will offer him a post in the Welsh executive.
In time-honoured fashion he says: "That will be a matter for Alun, if and when he becomes first secretary." But it's clear he won't be turning any job offers down.
"Let me make it enthusiastically clear, I'm not standing for the Assembly with a view to being a quiet person on the back-benches."
His purpose in Dublin is to learn more about the Irish experience in and of Europe - specifically about the way in which Ireland has used the potential of Objective 1 funding - and to talk about "the new intra-British Isles relationships" and how they are viewed from there.
Mr Davies rejects suggestions that the emerging British-Irish council will amount to little more than a talking shop.
Some people similarly say Welsh devolution won't make a difference: "They are fundamentally wrong. There will be a huge fundamental change in the way that Britain is run. It will have a profound effect on the British parliament. It will affect British industry, the voluntary sector, trade unions, political parties - all will have to change to accommodate these new relationships."
The English, he notes, are beginning to work through the consequences. And it will be interesting to see which of two alternative pressures asserts itself - the demand for an English parliament or an English dimension to the House of Commons; or the movement for English regionalism, likely to be led in the first instance from Cornwall and the north-east.
The Welsh assembly, he argues, "will create its own momentum". And he dismisses suggestions that, with little real power, it will be unable to resist the Downing Street/Millbank tendency to control.
The assembly, in fact, will have control of a budget of more than £7 billion, and enjoy a raft of secondary legislative powers and all the executive powers currently vested in the Secretary of State.
Moreover, those powers can be used to greater effect when no longer exercised by a Secretary of State bound by the rules of collective Cabinet responsibility.
"There may be some people who will want to exercise control. But they will find the power structures in the assembly will be quite different from the structures in Westminster and Whitehall. There things are very centralised. The assembly on the other hand will be very collective in its processes, and no matter what Millbank [Labour HQ] wants to do they will find the assembly will make its own decisions," says Mr Davies.
He acknowledges there will be proper concern in London to ensure that the government can deliver "UK-wide" policy pledges. But of London's concern at the potential for policy divergence in Scotland and Wales, the devolutionist insists: "My own view is that devolution is about divergence, if it's about anything."
And he warns: "The people in Millbank and Number 10 - it's not the principals - must understand that the government is committed to this process, and it does imply very radical change. And they will at their peril try to stand in the way of that radical change."
To Ron Davies's mind the biggest danger would be for the assembly to lapse into "policy incrementalism", trying to deliver public services as defined in Whitehall in its own way.
Beyond the need instantly to establish its profile, authority and dynamic, the assembly must show, not only that it can do existing things differently, but also do new things in and for Wales. And because Scotland is so much further down the road, he believes it is Cardiff which will produce the early tests of London's will.
The man who conceived devolution as "a process" not "an event" does not concede any automatic or necessary read-across from Scotland to Wales. Nor does he foresee any demand for eventual Welsh independence.
Interestingly though, he doesn't either argue the case for devolution as a means of securing the Union: "We have to have devolution in its own right. It isn't a means of breaking up the Union; it isn't a means of cementing the Union. It is a means of bringing devolution to Wales."
Does Mr Blair understand that, I wonder. His former Secretary of State smiles broadly: "Oh, I'm sure the Prime Minister understands all elements of Labour Party policy." For some reason your correspondent is not at all convinced.