It was a damp day and a damp start to the Mitchell review at Stormont. Pathetic fallacy, if memory serves, is what we learned at school: the elements conspiring to reflect the prevailing political mood. Ominous or what? What's more, there appeared to be a conspiracy to sideline the press.
As the rain beat down outside Castle Buildings yesterday one reporter observed, "How can you have a circus when there's no tent?"
That was a reference to the breathtaking lack of media facilities for this, surely, final attempt to save the Belfast Agreement. No marquee or Portakabins, as during other crisis talks, or tables or chairs or sockets for reporters to plug in their laptop computers so that they could work on site, so to speak.
The word from Stormont insiders was that the move to make life as difficult as possible for the press came from some of the parties, particularly from elements within the Ulster Unionist Party.
And it seems that former US senator Mr George Mitchell, who described himself as review "facilitator", might also have sympathy with this view.
There was a suggestion in the final weeks leading to the Belfast Agreement last year that the talks would move to some private location abroad where the concluding work could be done away from the media glare.
That never happened but the argument was that too much media focus unsettled nervous politicians who in front of the cameras were too afraid to do a deal.
This argument became more pronounced during the failed negotiations in late June/early July. There was a smell of an agreement when the Way Forward document was published but with Drumcree looming and the UUP riven with division, and the media recording it all, that enterprise collapsed ignominiously.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow is about establishing the ground rules and agenda for the rest of the review. Part of that business appears to be devising a plan that would allow progress to be achieved - and that may involve a new strategy of keeping the press on the run.
Mr Mitchell met the UUP, the SDLP, the DUP and Sinn Fein yesterday. He is meeting the rest of the parties and the British and Irish governments over today and tomorrow.
The remainder of the week is left free to cater for the fallout from Thursday's Patten report on policing, and, if that hasn't scuppered everything, Mr Mitchell will return to the North next Monday for more serious business - he hopes.
Rather than concentrating all action at Stormont, as heretofore, Mr Mitchell spoke of holding meetings at party offices or at other locations.
That way it might be possible to maintain some degree of confidentiality - and provide space for the UUP and Sinn Fein negotiators in particular as they try to conjure some solution to what at the moment is the intractable problem of guns and government.
Mr Mitchell told the politicians he had "no magic wand" to break the deadlock. But he reminded them that with power came responsibility and that involved "having the courage and wisdom to find a way to overcome the obstacles". He may be more assertive this time around.
He refused to disclose whether at the end of this initiative he would make a judgment and issue his own proposals for a solution to the impasse, which the parties could either reject or accept.
At the moment he wants the parties to find their own solution, but there was also a hint that some weeks down the road - he wouldn't state definitively how long he is prepared to stay here - he might devise his own blueprint for the way forward.
Mr Mitchell was firm in resisting pressure to have this review cover a broad range of issues: it was simple, it was about decommissioning and the formation of an executive, he insisted.
In the downpour outside Castle Buildings, there was no sign of a break in the cloud of political despair and recrimination.
Mr Seamus Mallon - leading the SDLP negotiators in the absence through illness of John Hume - complained that during the summer unionists cited the marching season for not striking a deal, and now they were citing the Patten report. Would the time ever be right for them?
The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, retorted that Mr Mallon was "loftily" sitting on the fence, and rather than criticising unionists should be examining whether he could have done more to find agreement. He said his party was holding to the line of "no guns, no government".
The Sinn Fein vice-president, Mr Pat Doherty, said his party was entering the review with a "positive and constructive" attitude but again there was no clue as to how the diametrically opposing positions of Sinn Fein and the UUP could be reconciled.
At least Mr Mitchell was in absolutely no doubt about where the DUP leader stood. Dr Paisley declared proudly that he was at Castle Buildings to "wreck" the Belfast Agreement.