FEBRUARY

After several months during which interviews with Enda would invariably end with that coy little question about that election date, and an equally coy response, at which point both parties would go home tired but happy, finally he used a Twitter video to announce that it would be held on February 26.

Which would give the pathological politicos a good month of it, largely oblivious to outside distractions such as the awarding of a knighthood to Van Morrison, another of the great artists of the 20th Century, albeit an unusual honour in that he hadn’t yet made it to the obituaries.

And while Trump was still taking out his Republican opponents, one by one, the real wonder of the world at this time was Leicester City, who were crazily leading the Premier League, and looking like they might even have a chance of winning it — though of course that could never actually happen, because things like that, well, they don’t happen, and that is that.

Still, David Drumm was coming back to Ireland, abandoning his legal challenge against extradition from the US. And that, too, would have seemed a long shot in an older, more predictable society. At the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, Luas workers were scheduled to go on strike on St Patrick’s Day, which was of course excellent news for everyone wanting an excuse to miss the parade — it had become so strange and so olde worlde for “the workers” to go on strike in any situation, however terrible, perhaps they felt they needed to provide some sort of a sweetener.

To the delight of an entire class, the Election yielded a result which was so unmanageable it would mean that, far from this being the end of all their fun, for the political operators at every level it was just the beginning.

Taking full advantage, they would contrive to keep this great new racket called ‘government formation’ going until May.