It was a most peculiar day that marked the climax not just of the Kyoto summit, but of a full decade of international talks on climate change, with everyone waiting around for hours on end as the negotiations entered their final day and the air thick with rumours, expectations and jokes.
For those centrally involved, the day was even longer as the Committee of the Whole (CoW) had stayed up talking for most of the previous night, with one session starting at 3.30 a.m. and finishing around five.
Numerous issues were still unresolved as people streamed into the conference centre later in the morning.
Behind the scenes, away from the huge media pack and the eyes and ears of lobbyists, the negotiations continued on a bilateral, trilateral and multilateral basis.
The whole place became a bizarre bazaar, with figures for greenhouse gas reductions being traded against almost every conceivable loophole (except "hot air").
The Americans were said to be bullying other countries to agree to this or that type of deal.
The Germans and the Danes, we heard, were holding out against anything which would give the US a way out of reducing its own emissions. Other EU countries, including Britain, were inclined to be more indulgent.
The behaviour of the Japanese was described by one well-placed source as "absolutely intolerable", because of their continuing objections to aspects of the deal throughout the final day.
For the country which was hosting the conference, these machinations were regarded as a betrayal of the rules of hospitality.
Environmental groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund busied themselves by organising a lunchtime demonstration featuring four hangman's nooses to represent the main loopholes which looked likely to find their way into the Kyoto Protocol, if the US had anything to do with it.
"How many Americans does it take to change a lightbulb?", one of the jokes ran. "None. Market forces will do it." But the US was leaving nothing to chance. President Clinton himself was "burning up the phone lines" to Third World leaders, leaning heavily on them to make "voluntary" commitments under the treaty.
The G77 group, representing over 130 developing countries, was deeply divided, with China insisting that not only would it make no such commitment to limit its greenhouse gas emissions, but that no other developing country should do so either - at least in advance of cuts by the rich industrialised countries.
As the day dragged on, some environmentalists produced an elaborate mock treaty which included such legally-binding commitments as "breathing more slowly to curb the emission of carbon dioxide" and ultimately removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere with the aid of "magic pixies on mind-altering drugs."
Copies were immediately snapped up as a souvenir by delegates, including Mr John Gummer MP, Britain's former environment secretary, who thought it was a hoot. He was wearing a special light blue tie with a design featuring white rabbits, top hats and magician's wands. "That's exactly what we need here", he said.
All afternoon, Asmbassador Raul Estrada, Argentinean chairman of the CoW, carried out a seemingly interminable round of talks with the various groups to identify common ground and isolate remaining differences.
Eventually, at 6.30 p.m., he presented the committee with a new draft treaty for discussion.
Many of the delegates had gone to an official reception in the Kyoto City Hall and so were not there to hear this one-time journalist declare that if the day did end with the adoption of a protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, December 10th would be remembered as the "Day of the Atmosphere."
It was not to be. The CoW did not convene again until 1 o'clock this morning (local time), to give the various delegations time to study the text.
They were still debating it hours later and, with planes to catch to all parts of the world, they had a definite deadline to meet and a spur to accepting a deal.