There are some occasions - like the shooting of John F. Kennedy - that you will always remember what you were doing at the time. Tony Blair's announcement of a fresh inquiry into Bloody Sunday at 3.35 p.m. yesterday came into that category for many people.
Nationalist Ireland and even some in the unionist community breathed a sigh of relief that at long last the end of a painful and grief-laden episode seemed to be in sight.
Over 26 years the relatives of the dead and a few friends and supporters kept the issue alive. Most other people tuned in and tuned out: the old questions flickering back to life at the time of the annual commemoration.
The administration in Dublin, headed first by John Bruton and later Bertie Ahern, can claim its share of the credit for yesterday's announcement. But there was a time when Dublin did not particularly want to know; when issues such as Bloody Sunday or the Birmingham Six were kept at arm's length; when a McCarthyite atmosphere reigned and campaigners who spoke of truth and justice were in danger of being maligned as outriders for the IRA.
While relatives and campaigners retained a residue of scepticism until they had studied the details of the inquiry, there was still a powerful sense that yesterday was one of those occasions when the principles of truth and justice might, for once, be applied without let or hindrance in the political arena.
Unionist reaction was muted. The community's house organ, the News Letter, had called with great courage last year for an apology for the shootings. That editorial by Geoff Martin expressed a feeling shared, however discreetly, by a good many decent people in his community.
Although David Trimble criticised the Prime Minister it was more in sorrow than in anger, and his body language did not bespeak a man who was about to launch a vigorous and sustained campaign over the proposed inquiry.
Besides, who could have a problem with searching for the truth? Nationalists will be watching carefully to ensure the new investigation is conducted in a proper manner, whereas unionists rather cynically suspect that nationalists will reject the final report if it fails to come up with "the right answer".
Meanwhile, whatever grand gestures are made in the House of Commons, the grubby viciousness of day-to-day sectarianism remains the reality on the ground: with tragic weariness a taxi-driver remarked to this writer yesterday in Belfast that his colleagues were being shot down "like clay pigeons".
The Bloody Sunday inquiry is further evidence of Labour's desire to tidy up and modernise Northern Ireland - to remove some of the running sores and perennial causes of bad international publicity.
Although many people rightly resent the inquiry being linked to progress in the peace process, it will nevertheless be seen as a confidence-building measure calculated to enhance the "feel-good factor" among the nationalist parties. Certainly Mr Blair's standing among nationalists has improved and many were impressed by the firm manner with which he dealt with the UUP leader's objections in the Commons.
There are plausible suggestions that London's ability to make the right decision was enhanced by a threat from Dublin to publish its dissection of the Widgery Report no matter what happened over a new inquiry. The language in Dublin's 178-page document has a sharpness and bite that are rarely seen in public Anglo-Irish communications.
Perhaps its most memorable formulation comes on the second-last page where it condemns the then-Lord Chief Justice: "Lord Widgery, the pivotal trustee of the rule of law, who sought to taint them (the victims) with responsibility for their own deaths in order to exonerate, even at that great moral cost, those he found it inexpedient to blame."
It would have been much less effective had the Irish Government simply forwarded the new material to London for its consideration. The fact that Dublin made its own assessment made the case for a new inquiry far more compelling.
In the zero-sum game that is Northern politics, the Bloody Sunday inquiry will be seen by far too many people as a gain for nationalists and therefore a loss to unionists. A practical gesture towards other victims of the Troubles would not go amiss at this stage, e.g., extra financial aid to victim support groups. The notion of a Truth Commission has once again been raised, although it is pointed out that such a body in South Africa had to await a political settlement.
Next Monday the talks resume and it will be back to the old business of soundbites and cold shoulders. The Bloody Sunday inquiry may finally arrive at the truth but it will not, unfortunately, bring any of the victims - six of them only 17 years of age - or any of the others who died in the Troubles, back to life.