A sign outside Derry's Guildhall directs visitors to another of the city's tourist attractions, the "Verbal Arts Centre". After 389 days and 852 witnesses at the Saville Inquiry, lawyers entering the Guildhall yesterday could be forgiven for thinking they already knew all they needed to about verbal arts.
But they were still learning on day 390, when witness 853 - Martin McGuinness - took the stand.
For example, insisting that IRA men were deliberately unarmed during the ill-fated march on Bloody Sunday, the Sinn Féin MP tried to explain that this order would not have been binding on them after the march. His suggestion that volunteers would have "had their tea, watched the news and resumed the struggle against the British occupying forces," left Christopher Clarke QC puzzled.
"Let us not mince words," the lawyer urged. "Is what you are saying that, after tea, volunteers would be free to shoot at the British forces?"
Undaunted, Mr McGuinness offered him another tour of the verbal arts centre, this time detailing the IRA's extensive patrols of Free Derry in 1972 and explaining that, had the British army entered the area, "volunteers would have taken them on militarily".
Again Mr Clarke suspected mincing. "You use these euphemisms. 'Taking them on' militarily means shooting them, does it not?" At last relenting with the verbals, Mr McGuinness agreed: "Absolutely, yes."
The lawyers could not have been surprised that yesterday was hard work. As the witness reminded them on several occasions, he was no stranger to dealing with questions. If they were frustrated by his refusal to, for example, identify the safe house where the IRA met on Bloody Sunday, they could console themselves that he'd never identified it in Castlereagh detention centre either.
Another sticking point - pun intended - was his short-lived membership of the Official IRA in 1970. Mr McGuinness first refused to discuss this at all, on the grounds that it wasn't relevant. But he eventually confirmed he had briefly been an Official before joining the "Irish Republican Army".
Still struggling with the language lessons, Mr Clarke had to check a couple of times that when the witness referred to the Irish Republican Army, he meant "what others refer to as the Provisionals".
Among the plethora of documentary exhibits yesterday was an old newspaper cutting from the Daily Express, headlined: "The Boy Who Rules Free Derry". Three decades later the boy has most recently ruled the North's education ministry, and he appeared at the Guildhall as a sharply dressed man with an MVA (Master of Verbal Arts) degree.
But as the afternoon wore on, the suave exterior could not hide growing frustration, especially when confronted with evidence from police agents, or unnamed sources.
Far from mincing his words, he couldn't find any blunt enough to describe his contempt for one "informer" and recent Saville witness, Paddy Ward, although "liar", "fool" and "idiot" were among the ones he tried. And when he wasn't pouring vitriol on enemies, he was making speeches.
By contrast, his refusal to answer certain questions relating to IRA operations rankled with Lord Saville. Earlier, Mr McGuinness had explained how his desire to retaliate on Bloody Sunday had given way after a "period of reflection". But his first day on the stand ended with the chairman inviting him to have another such period overnight.