Rain and bomb scares haven’t prevented thousands of people enjoying St Patrick’s day in Belfast.
"It’s a beautiful day," sang Bono, the greatest living Irishman and a candidate for sainthood, according to some, not least himself.
Unfortunately the sentiment did not translate in Belfast, where it was an averagely bad day. The rain came down in sheets, gave up briefly, then drizzled and came down in sheets again. The people of Belfast have seen worse however and were not going to be denied their carnival by the rain.
Four parades set off from north, south, east and west Belfast with that from west Belfast being the largest by far.
While not on the same scale as Dublin, New York or Chicago ("Three blokes on stilts and a marching band? For f**k's sake!" is how one uncharitable bystander put it), what the events lacked in large scale pizzazz they made up in community support.
Preceded by a phalanx of dozen black taxis bedecked with tricolour ribbons and stencils of leprechauns, 3 or 4,000 gathered to watch and then follow the west Belfast parade down the Falls Road into the city centre where it joined the other parades in front of the city hall for a concert.
In a new departure - possibly with one eye to how the heroes of 9/11 were being feted in New York - the Northern Ireland Fire Service took the opportunity to warn people about the dangers of unattended fires.
Their "fire safety gang" had the best costumes of all the children in the parade but there were many contenders as this year’s theme was "children of the world". Around 50 children with their faces painted in the flags of a variety of colours followed what was the only real float of the parade, in the shape of a massive square globe.
Despite a strong body of opinion that St Patrick was a proto-protestant who would probably have felt more at home with the anti-papal rhetoric of free Presbyterians than in the Archbishop’s palace, the parade remains a resolutely nationalist event.
Evidence that there were those in the community who were less than enamoured with the idea of fellow citizens waving tricolours at City Hall came in the form of three suspect devices along the path of the west Belfast march.
At the last, barely 100 metres from the route, a British army bomb disposal officer could be seen investigating a white Volvo, with open doors and a shattered rear windscreen.
The loudest cheer of the day went up as pupils and parents from the Holy Cross girls catholic primary school, which was at the focus for violence and controversy last year, led the north Belfast parade into the square in front of city hall.
Once all the parades had converged, a crowd of around 10,000, including the Sinn Féin President, Mr Gerry Adams, listened to an Irish band, Irish dancing and were treated to the spectacle of an African drum and dance band.
The carnival’s organiser, Irene Sherry said that after the disappointment the previous year, when foot and mouth led to the cancellation of the parade, it was "great to be back in the city centre."
Unbowed by the weather and the bomb scares she said "it's onwards and upwards for next year’s parade."