With policing, decommissioning, another potential leadership tussle, and most imminently, and perhaps ominously, the South Antrim by-election on Thursday, David Trimble needs a cheerful tune to help him whistle past the graveyard.
The First Minister is said to be developing a black sense of humour to maintain his political sanity these days. Such a sideways take on politics is probably inevitable when one considers South Antrim.
He is relying on David Burnside - who says he would now vote against the Belfast Agreement and who many believe wants to topple Mr Trimble - to ensure the security (for the moment) of his leadership position, and by extension the security of the agreement. Unravel that. So, out on the hustings it's hardly surprising there is voter confusion and some voter apathy in the pro-agreement unionist bloc. What does a vote for Mr Burnside actually mean, they wonder.
The Rev William McCrea's DUP politics, like his fundamentalist Protestantism, is about certainty. He is not besieged by doubts, and neither are his supporters. He is anti-agreement to the core. Vote McCrea in, get Trimble out, is his message. No wonder Mr McCrea is so cheerful on the canvass. He has a direct but effective point to deliver, and this gospel-singing political cleric delivers it with gusto.
Mr Burnside, on the other hand, wants to play to the Yes and No unionists. He's their unity candidate, he tells them. But South Antrim unionists are still trying to figure out Mr Burnside. He voted Yes on the agreement but now would vote No, yet there are elements of the deal which he commends.
He wants it both ways. Can he have it both ways? That question appears the key to who will be declared the next Westminster MP for the constituency sometime in the early hours of next Friday morning. This count, unlike in other elections in Northern Ireland, is being held on the night, immediately after the polls close, rather than beginning the next morning.
Between them they won over 15,000 votes. The two pro-agreement unionists, Jim Wilson and Duncan Shipley-Dalton, and Ken Wilkinson of the Progressive Unionist Party, won over 12,000 votes. This would rise to over 13,000 if most of the 1,100 votes of the Women's Coalition candidate Joan Cosgrove came broadly from the Yes unionist side of the house.
This would give Mr McCrea an advantage of between 2,000 and 3,000. The imponderable here though is whether unionists would vote on a simple Yes/No position on the agreement, or whether Ulster Unionist Party loyalty would come to the rescue of Mr Burnside. David Trimble, notwithstanding his numerous justified misgivings, hopes his potential successor gets the nod from the bewildered electorate. But should Mr McCrea win the personality test, then Mr Trimble knows the fraught challenges ahead: the vultures within and without the Ulster Unionist Party are already circling. But the First Minister is still whistling nervously. Whatever happens on Thursday, his answer to the No camp will be the same as it has always been: show me your alternative. At least Mr Trimble believes there is still fuel left in the tank of the Belfast Agreement.
Friday morning. This count, unlike in other elections in Northern Ireland, is being held on the night, immediately after the polls close, rather than beginning the next morning.
This is a strict unionist battle. It was mooted at the outset of the campaign that some SDLP and Alliance supporters, and maybe even a handful of Sinn Fein voters, would tactically mark their Xs in favour of Burnside to aid Trimble and the agreement.
But listening to the line on the canvass stomp, that is not a runner. If anything the Alliance candidate, David Ford, believes some Yes unionists will switch to him. Pro-agreement nationalists and moderates despise Mr McCrea's politics, but equally they don't like Mr Burnside. Mr Burnside, with his London PR company and his administrative know-how, and his contacts with New Labour and New Conservatism, portrays himself as a moderniser; but for nationalists he is simply Old Unionist. They will vote for Donovan McClelland of the SDLP and Sinn Fein's Martin Meehan.
Some jittery unionists are now wondering why the party hierarchy didn't allow the popular local man and Assembly chief whip Jim Wilson to stand against Mr McCrea, and to hell with complaints about Assembly-Westminster double-jobbing. It's a bit nervous out there.
The question is simple to pose: who will win the main share of the unionist vote in South Antrim? But it's devilishly difficult to answer. Listening to the voters and chatting to unionists, nationalists, republicans, academics, journalists and commentators it's impossible to get a confident fix on the mood of the electorate. That's because the electorate itself is perplexed.
On the canvasses Mr McCrea, because of his personality, elicits the warmer response, but Mr Burnside is putting in the legwork and meeting the people. He may be austere, but there's no doubting his sharp political teeth and his hunger. That goes down well with unionists. And looking at the pantheon of leading unionists down the decades, being dour never did them any harm with the voters. Resolute is the word Mr Burnside would prefer.
One must discount the returns from the Westminster election of 1997 when the late Clifford Forsythe, with no DUP rival, won for the UUP with a majority of over 16,000. The best reference is the Assembly election of two years ago when the three UUP candidates took over 13,000 votes, and the two DUP candidates won over 8,800 votes.
Even allowing for a swing against the UUP, that should get Mr Burnside the seat. But what's crucial is the breakdown between the returns of the pro- and anti-agreement unionist candidates.
There were four No candidates in the 1998 election, the two DUP runners, Norman Boyd, then standing for Robert McCartney's UK Unionist Party but now aligned to yet another anti-agreement unionist splinter group, and UUP candidate and No unionist John Hunter.