Election diary: Suppose Rip Van Winkle woke up after his lengthy sleep to find that nothing had changed? This is how one feels coming back to Northern Ireland after five years, to find that political stalemate still reigns.
It's not quite true that nothing has changed. The SDLP has ceded much ground to Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists have painted the UUP into a corner. But in the process, Sinn Féin and the DUP have both changed and acquired some of the coloration of the creatures they seek to swallow.
But seven years after the Long Good Friday, there is still no stable power-sharing administration, the Assembly is suspended, the cross-Border bodies operate on a care-and- maintenance basis and the new era of harmonious co-operation between representatives of the two communities has yet to materialise.
There wouldn't have been quite so much euphoria on Good Friday 1998 if the assembled parties and negotiators had known that, five years into the next century, the designated partners in government would still be glowering sullenly at each other from opposite sides of the dance-floor.
Nevertheless, there are reasons to be cheerful if you go looking for them. Northern Ireland is a quiet place compared to little more than a decade ago.
Bombings, shootings, attacks on the security forces, sectarian killings have largely disappeared from the news agenda.
Omagh was the last big bomb, so terrible that even Northern Ireland couldn't contemplate a repetition. At the site of the bomb in Market Street this week, workers were busily widening the pavement and laying cobblestones to convert it into a more pedestrian-friendly zone.
Shopfronts have been refurbished and a snack bar offers café latté with cinnamon. But one cannot help being struck again by how narrow the street was for such a huge explosion and what little chance there was for those who were trapped there.
Schoolkids and shoppers amble along in the afternoon sun, just as they did that day in mid-August 1998. The majority of the 29 dead (two unborn children also perished) were aged 21 or under.
Traffic is buzzing past the courthouse at the other end of the thoroughfare, where public figures and private citizens assembled a week after the bombing to commemorate the dead. But, as a local man pointed out, life goes on.
One of the saddest sights after the bombing was the mountain of flowers left with cards and cuddly toys in memory of the teenagers who died. Now, though, teenagers are making their way along Market Street and its continuation into High Street as though nothing had happened.
That could be considered a form of callousness, but one prefers to see it as reflecting the resilience of the human spirit.
Hopefully, never again will misguided individuals place the lives of ordinary people at risk in such a way for any cause.
Happily, the bombing does not feature in this election. The hot issue is the reduction in acute and emergency services at the local hospital. The political debate in Omagh has echoes from similar controversies south of the Border.
An hour's journey away, in Portadown, Rip Van Winkle could go to sleep for 50 years, never mind five, and find that nothing had changed. Sectarian divisions still run deep and old mindsets remain entrenched. Yet, even here, there is hope.
The running sore of Drumcree which brought Northern Ireland to the edge of chaos every July has entered a new non-toxic phase.
The fundamental problem remains unsolved and no amicable agreement has been reached so that the Orangemen can march along the nationalist Garvaghy Road with the consent of the local residents.
But nobody is being murdered over Drumcree these days.
Bitter bigots who stirred the pot in a spirit of blind hatred have either gone to other places or learned the difficult art of keeping their counsel.
On the negative side, some of the old terrorists had become new criminals and that not all of the politicians who took risks for peace were equally rewarded with the appreciation and gratitude of their communities.
There are still some people in Northern Ireland who prefer a clear-cut fight to an ambivalent peace. It's an age-old problem, not easily solved: Rip Van Winkle would have to sleep on it.