You don't appreciate them until they're gone: those American marching bands. Generally considered as something to endure rather than enjoy on St Patrick's Day, they were badly missed in Dublin yesterday as a depleted parade took the streets two months behind schedule.
Local brass bands gallantly tried to fill the gap but there was no denying they felt the loss of their American cousins, who were unable to travel due to academic and financial constraints.
In their absence, the procession lacked its traditional snakelike shape, resembling instead something of a worm sliced into pieces.
The delays were worst on O'Connell Street where the crowd had to wait until 3 p.m. for the first float to arrive, almost a full hour after the pre-parade entertainment and vintage car rally concluded.
The only thing to punctuate the boredom was the arrival of the Lord Mayor, Mr Maurice Ahern, who took a seat in the VIP stand with his wife, Moira, next to his younger brother, the Taoiseach.
Despite the slimmed-down procession, however, the attendance was as big as ever, with an estimated 500,000 people turning up.
A Bord Failte spokeswoman said that with the majorettes gone, fewer people than normal travelled from the US. However, a significant number seemed to have come from the UK especially for the event.
Whether they adhered to the foot-and-mouth festival guidelines, which included a demand for UK visitors to "shower with plenty of soap and hot water" was far from clear. The only smells that could be picked up on O'Connell Street were from chip bags and the diesel fumes of passing floats.
There was little evidence also of people using the disinfectant mats laid down by the organisers. Appropriately coloured green, there were 18 of them dotted around the city.
Nonetheless, they were easy to miss - unlike all the Celtic jerseys in yesterday's crowd. The last time O'Connell Street saw so many of them was during last month's "mini-riot" - as the gardai described it.
Fortunately, there was to be no repetition yesterday although at one stage a famous Celtic supporter seemed to have got himself into trouble when he was confronted by a menacing looking street entertainer.
The Taoiseach was pinned to his seat as "Paddy Dracula" leapt over the railings to have his photo taken with him.
Later, Mr Ahern was seen singing along to the tune emanating from "The Happy Snakes" float: "Day-oh! Day-ayoh! Daylight come and I wanna go home". Whether he was still thinking of the cheeky vampire wasn't clear.
As soon as the last band had passed, Mr Ahern - who had been in his seat from 2 p.m. - ran from the stand across the street to his car, apparently eager to get home.
It was, as one football pundit might have put it, a good parade but not a great one.
