Within 24 hours of politicians shuttling into Hillsborough Castle to see Peter Hain and Dermot Ahern, they had dropped off local news headlines, upstaged by the Belfast postal strike.
An angry young executive on television next day spoke for small firms threatened by the pile-up of orders, bills and payments in the aptly named Tomb Street depot. The political world got the back of her hand. Why, she asked, didn't politicians get involved in trying to end the strike instead of "talking about strange things".
But strikes pass. Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams are not being pushed by their respective communities: the votes are solid for the foreseeable future, no matter what governments and rivals spin to the contrary. Downing Street hints that the 108 Assembly members can kiss goodbye to salaries and expenses if there is no movement by April. Few believe them: it was difficult enough to erect the structures in the first place.
The compromises necessary to restore powersharing in the near future will be made, or not made, as it suits party considerations. Any pressure there is on the DUP and Sinn Féin will come chiefly from within. Their worlds are separate sub-sets of a political society - dominated by the face-off between republicans and Paisleyites that gives it such a harsh tone, also larger and more varied than ever before.
The DUP conference theme of triumph last weekend was also voiced as delight at the overturn of "Ulster Unionist domination, our years as second-class citizens, demonised and marginalised". It sounded like nothing so much as the Sinn Féin cry of (very recent) ages past and the ancient wail of gerrymandered nationalists.
Visual impressions had more to do with the future. The similar energy in the two parties and rafts of young assistants, advisers and press officers carrying files and texting each other, is almost a cliché. Close-up, there is none of the stagnation suggested by failure to reinstate the Executive and Assembly.
Both Sinn Féin and DUP instead show signs of problems that go with growth, and peacetime. The suspension of Mid-Ulster republican veteran Francie Molloy for bucking the party line on council reorganisation has been smoothed over with his reinstatement: the aftertaste lingers. While they thought themselves at war, no republicans spoke out of turn. In the wake of panic about spies rumoured, outed, absorbed back into debriefing and concealment, the old reflex of a unified front to a hostile world is kicking in again.
In the DUP's case, replacing once-dominant Ulster Unionism has brought its own difficulty. The party's years with no more than three Westminster MPs and no forum in Northern Ireland meant comparatively simple management, small staff numbers. Their Westminster nine, on top of dominance in the Assembly, means more potential for dispute. There were gasps when Rhonda Paisley began an action against the party after rejection for a senior post.
In the last few elections, grassroots grumbling about candidates preferred by headquarters has troubled the DUP more openly than Sinn Féin.
The picket by Free Presbyterians clutching Bibles at the party conference was a first, though smaller than promised, and not clutching the leaflet circulated in advance with the headline: "Save the DUP from secularism." To a veteran eye, this seemed an entirely religious protest, born of the age when the DUP campaigned to Save Ulster from Sodomy and the gut of old concern about conflict between political involvement and Bible Protestantism. An icy delegate asked a picketer in passing: "Are you even a member of the party?"
No, she said, and after 15 years voting for them she would never do it again unless they shaped up and "stood with the Lord". But the picketers hailed from another day, though they seemed unaware how conclusively that has passed. Why had councillors been told to abstain, they asked, rather than vote with all the authority of God's word against the use of council premises to celebrate civil partnerships? Why had the party heeded legal advice that they could face suits for damages? "God will provide," said the picketers.
An earnest woman said: "I love Dr Paisley in the Lord, he spoke out well in Westminster. But I want to ask him why the party's not behaving like he always has." She added: "I might look calm to you but my belly's flipping over with nerves." The leader did not come out to meet the picketers. Told about the "God will provide" line, a party representative rolled his eyes.
Growth for some has meant shrinkage for others, the SDLP adjusting to a new stance of trying harder in also-ran position and beginning to regain confidence, while Ulster Unionists simply look lost. One current tack, apparently, is to look for recruits among Catholics, or "pro-union Roman Catholics" as the officer tasked to the project unselfconsciously calls them. Never a winning line in Northern unionist mouths, in this downcast UU centenary year it has the ring of desperation, and lost plots.