The Twelfth is just past and we are 12 days into the Drumcree standoff and all the attendant disruption, violence and trauma over whether or not the Portadown Orangemen will ever again tramp down the nationalist Garvaghy Road.
They are an obdurate lot - the leaders of the Portadown District, Harold Gracey and David Jones and the rest of the senior brethren. "Here we stand, we can do no other," they repeat time and time again, quoting Martin Luther.
Last night they remained on the hill at Drumcree. And they may be there for some time yet. But the numbers are slipping. Respected unionist voices, some of them leading Orangemen, want an end to the protests. We have disruption but not insurrection.
An important subplot here is the battle between the Yes and No camps. The leaders of the Grand Orange Lodge and of the Portadown District are opposed to the Belfast Agreement and, of course, to the North's First Minister and Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble.
An Orange/anti-agreement equivalent of "the hay saved and Cork bet" would be Trimble's scalp and loyal feet on the Garvaghy Road. Of course Cork aren't "bet" and there's no sign of a parade being allowed by threat of protest and violence.
Five years ago, David Trimble marched, some would say danced, hand-in-hand with Ian Paisley into Portadown town centre, having by virtue of negotiation and compromise (although Mr Trimble insists there was no compromise) navigated a path for the Portadown brethren down Garvaghy Road.
A couple of months later, Mr Trimble succeeded James Molyneaux as leader of the Ulster Unionists on the back of that performance. The Portadown Orangemen joined their Co Armagh confreres at Killylea yesterday for the annual Twelfth parade. Mr Trimble wasn't there. Some would not have welcomed his presence.
Mr Trimble has moved on since 1995, both in terms of political strategy and political philosophy. Needs must brought change, the Belfast Agreement, an assembly, an executive, a shaky form of political consensus, a Nobel Peace Prize.
The Portadown brethren have stood still. The leadership in the Grand Orange Lodge appears to go round in circles, effectively doing nothing, wringing their hands, deploring the violence, but refusing to publicly bring the Portadown District to heel. Harold on the hill, like Gerry Adams before him, won't condemn violence.
Mr Trimble doesn't have much to laugh at these days. When one political blockade is negotiated, another one is quickly erected. But the Ulster Unionist leader was heard to chuckle when interviewed by Mark Simpson on BBC Radio Ulster at the weekend. Prior to that, Mr Trimble was urging the Portadown members to talk to the Parades Commission and, maybe later, to the Garvaghy residents.
Mark Simpson quoted back to him the comment from Denis Watson, anti-agreement unionist Assembly member, grand secretary of the Grand Lodge of Ireland and Armagh county master, who said Mr Trimble "should get out of the kitchen if he can't take the heat".
Mr Trimble laughed and said, "I've been taking the heat for the past five years."
It was a good answer. No politician on these islands, not even Charles Haughey, has had a tougher ride in recent years. He's kept his nerve and held on for dear life when the easier option for other mortals would be to tumble off the horse. Policing or some other issue may unhorse him yet, but the current odds are the agreement won't be toppled - that beast is a little steadier these days. The security of Mr Trimble's position and of the agreement will, to an extent, depend on Sinn Fein playing a fair game. Gerry Adams has pledged to be sensitive to unionist difficulties. Playing it as stubborn as the Portadown brethren on parades won't do Mr Trimble or the agreement any favours.
We had dual plots running yesterday. One was, could the Drumcree standoff be the undoing of Mr Trimble and the agreement? The answer so far is: it couldn't. Unionist and Orange opposition to the Drumcree protests is continuing to swell. Anti-agreement unionists have been careful, and probably tactically wise, not to associate themselves directly with the protest. Unlike previous years, there was no sign of Ian Paisley or Jeffrey Donaldson on the hill with the protesters.
Mr Donaldson, speaking at Twelfth demonstrations yesterday, denounced the violence associated with the protest, as have other anti-agreement unionists and senior Orange figures such as MP William Thompson and Belfast councillor Jim Rodgers.
Mr Rodgers was heckled by some loyalists at the Twelfth rally in Ormeau Park, Belfast, when he deplored the violence, but he held his ground. Senior Protestant church leaders have spoken similarly.
Who can save the Orange Order from itself? Perhaps it should heed the advice of William Brown, a deputy grand master of the order, who yesterday called for a "drastic change" in the leadership of the institution. No road was worth the violence and the damage being visited on the order and Northern society. "There are plenty of roads to march in Ulster," he said on BBC. "We can't go on year after year after year [like this]. We are losing good members. We are attracting people we don't want to attract," he said.
Republicans, if so minded, can sit back and watch the order tear itself apart. Mr Brown was conscious of this. "This is a republican trap, we have walked straight into it," he lamented.
We have the sham fight between King Billy and King James at Scarva today. Thereafter the Portadown District will announce whether it will maintain or escalate its protests.
Will it listen to the likes of Mr Brown? The Parades Commission in its ruling set down reasonable conditions by which they could parade the Garvaghy Road in three to eight months' time. That involves some form of dialogue with Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith and the Garvaghy residents.
"Never, never, never," is the line from the Portadown District. But if the brethren can speak to Johnny Adair or Billy Wright, there's no reason why they can't at least test the sincerity of Mr Mac Cionnaith when he says he wants to find a "third way" out of this grim, violent annual saga.