Shortly before the news of the latest decommissioning developments, a Belfast artist suggested a novel way for the IRA to get rid of its weapons.
"They could dip them in chocolate," said Rita Duffy whose latest work, Dessert, is a full-size Kalashnikov made from a kilo of plain chocolate.
The chocolate AK47 is on display as part of the Feile An Phobail in the artist's old school, St Dominic's High School on the Falls Road, where Mary McAleese was also a student. It was cast from a mould of a real gun, but Ms Duffy wasn't saying where she had sourced the weapon, only that she no longer had it. "That story is part of the art," she said.
Death by chocolate was the last thing on the minds of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness as they walked through St Mary's University College, down the road from the chocolate rifle display. Photographers and reporters anxious to record the Sinn Fein response to Gen de Chastelain's statement surrounded them.
They were there to launch The Remembering Quilt, another part of Feile an Phobail, created by relatives of victims of the Troubles. Some of the squares featured photographs of dead IRA volunteers, slogans such as "Ireland for the Irish" and carefully embroidered guns. The most poignant of the more than 250 pieces of textile art were dedicated to children, the squares festooned with birthday candles or footballs.
Alice Harper listened closely to Gerry Adams as he spoke from the stage about the importance of an "equivalence of grief", acknowledging as he did the hurt inflicted by republicans during the Troubles. Her brother Bernard Taggart was 15 when the IRA first tortured and murdered him in 1973. She had embroidered one of the patches of the quilt with a silver cross and a picture of her brother who, she said, had a mental age of nine. "They said it was a mistake, they thought he was a tout," she said.
"It was good to hear him apologising for the hurt caused by republicans," she added. "I'm very, very happy that the IRA are going to decommission. It's about time. It may not bring him back but it helps."
Her mother Bella stood looking at another part of the quilt, a square emblazoned with a pint of Guinness in memory of her husband Danny Taggart, Alice's father, who was killed by paratroopers. "You just have to get over it," she said. One of Bella's nephews was also featured on the exhibit.
Later, at Rose Park House, the HQ of the decommissioning body, the Rev Ian Paisley and a delegation from the DUP emerged unimpressed from a meeting with Gen de Chastelain.
The delegation had barely put up their umbrellas to shelter from a downpour when Dr Paisley began to rain on the decommissioning body's parade. It was a secret deal, he said. There was no information about the where, the when, the why and the how. Although clearly disgruntled, he smiled when introduced to some young boys who had waited in the rain to meet him. "This young fellow does a great impression of you," a man told the Reverend. "Keep it up," the big man replied.
It was still raining on the Shankill Road. Black cabs ferried American tourists in baseball caps on a tour of the murals around imprisoned UFF leader Johnny Adair's housing estate. Local residents were as impressed by the news as Dr Paisley. Shutting up his butcher shop, a man said he did not believe there would ever be decommissioning. "I have heard it all before . . . I don't take the word of murderers," he said. Another woman, shopping with her grandchild, thought some people were making too good a living out of the Troubles to want it to stop.
"But I just wish it was all over, love . . . Catholic and Protestant, we all just want it over. I just want to live in peace."