TAKE 14 European farm ministers, an EU Commissioner, 40 gardai and nearly 200 journalists, drop them in a Kerry bog of a Monday evening and watch what happens.
Add a drop of rain earlier in the morning and a disaffected British Minister of Agriculture, Mr Douglas Hogg, and an Irish Minister for Agriculture, Ivan Yates, who wants to explain how to cut turf in September.
Confusion is a polite word for the trip to the bog yesterday evening, which was part of the informal meeting of EU ministers in Killarney.
The last time so many foreigners were lost in an Irish bog was at the Battle of Aughrim between the Irish and their European allies and the British and theirs.
One had to admire the hatless Douglas Hogg yesterday, the man said to be standing in the way of resolving the European beef crisis which has brought these ministers here.
So many of the journalists wanted to interview him that he was perpetually culled off from the rest of the ministers by the journalists.
A true Brit, he stood alone and in his own shoes, too, refusing the offer from Department of Agriculture staff of blue plastic over shoes for the walk to the bog bank.
By the time he arrived there, Ivan Yates and his other colleagues had occupied the high ground - the bog bank. There was roaring: "All the media in the swamp and the ministers up here."
The camera crews and photographers sank in the bog while Ivan Yates showed the European visitors how to cut turf. He cut, the EU Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, cut. And then it was Mr Hogg's turn.
"You pick out one journalist and you throw this at him," said the diminutive Mr Hogg as he threw freshly cut turf sods at the media.
Mr Yates told the journalists he would be seeking intervention for Irish turf, but the joke was lost on most of them, even though they understood an earlier quip that Irish farmers don't fear bad weather, just a postal strike, because so much of their money comes in the post.
The trip to the bog came after the entire assembly had viewed a pen of horned Kerry ewes and was shown nine acres of trees being grown by the host farmers, James and Mary O'Farrell, near Kenmare.