Like heavy weather that breaks in a summer thunderstorm, the tension in Northern Ireland traditionally dissipates this weekend with the conclusion of the Orange marching season.
There are likely to be some clashes as supporters of the Apprentice Boys make their way home to south and northwest Belfast later today. But these are traditional fixtures that have preceded the serious violence of the past 30 years and will continue annually so long as there are working-class Catholic and Protestant communities living cheek by jowl in Belfast.
The summer would not be the summer in Belfast without the odd riot. Today's event has some ominous historic resonances. It was the violence that followed the August 1969 Apprentice Boys' march in Derry that lit the fuse for the Troubles.
A great deal has since flowed under the Carson Bridge, over which the Apprentice Boys march into the mainly Catholic Bogside of Derry today to mark the 15-week siege in 1689 when the Protestant population of the walled city held out against the Jacobite forces led by the Earl of Antrim.
But this year the street violence should be only a sideshow. As the loyalist bands and marchers make their way through the centre of Derry today, the real interest is centred on the route being taken by the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, at Stormont.
His legislative route of temporarily suspending the Northern Ireland Assembly is where the real prospects for peace or otherwise lie. The North has moved away from the politics of the gun and bomb.
Despite three murders, the campaign of loyalist pipe-bomb attacks and sectarian rioting in north Belfast, this has been one of the most bloodless summers in recent history. Drumcree was a complete damp squib.
Dr Reid's hope, and that of most of the parties involved, is that the suspension of the Assembly will be a temporary measure designed to give everyone another chance to sort out the mess that has blown up again over the crucial issues of paramilitary decommissioning and policing.
No one is actually happy about the suspension but senior officials involved in the grindingly difficult process of negotiation here believe that, despite this week's posturing by unionists, there is still a good chance of resolving the issues deadlocking the political process.
Both governments tried unsuccessfully to convince unionists this week that there was more than double-speak in the IRA statement on decommissioning. The joint statements by Gen de Chastelain, who has worked for six years towards the point of achieving arms decommissioning, and the IRA did contain language that represents significant movement.
Both the IRA and Gen de Chastelain used the term that the IRA had initiated a process that "will" begin the process of decommissioning, not the surrender of weapons but their destruction. The key phrase in the IRA statement of Thursday night was: "we can confirm that the IRA leadership has agreed a scheme with the IICD, which will put IRA arms completely and verifiably beyond use". The IRA has not made such a commitment before. It has stated it will consider this move and met Gen de Chastelain eight times since March this year to further this process. Senior government sources believe that the process is now an inevitability, that the IRA has stated its intention to make this move and that it is prepared to do so.
Sinn Fein's responses this week to the unionist rebuff of Gen de Chastelain's confirmation of the process showed that its object is still to maintain the institutions of the Belfast Agreement and particularly the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The political leadership of the republican movement, it can be read, is now prepared to dispose of an important section of its arsenal, those weapons that can be used in "war" against the security forces in the North, in order to sustain democratic structures that were built on the agreement.
The principal concern of both governments is whether, on his return from holiday in Austria, the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr Trimble, will be in a position to lead his party back into any reconstituted Assembly.
There is some trepidation that Mr Trimble no longer has sufficient support within his own party to allow a return to a government that includes Sinn Fein members even in the event of IRA decommissioning.
During the week further unionist demands were put on the table. Further points were raised over policing, a key issue for unionists. The "reform" or "disbandment" of the RUC is a highly emotive issue for unionism which has, for the entire existence of Northern Ireland, seen the RUC as one of the institutions that acted as a guarantor of the Union. The removal of this political connotation from policing was, however, central to the Patten Commission recommendations.
Refusal to accept the core recommendations of Patten at this stage will be interpreted by those outside unionism as an excuse not to become involved in a government process that has green nationalists in power and an entirely depoliticised police force.
And so, today, the Northern Secretary will begin yet another phase of renegotiations and new deadlines. Neither government and certainly not the centrist political groups in the SDLP and Ulster Unionists want an election. The DUP remains the only party actively seeking this course, saying the UK government must accept that the electorate has moved away from the UUP and the SDLP. But even it would participate in any review of the Belfast Agreement, though it won't negotiate directly with Sinn Fein.
There was no indication, so far, that the IRA would repeat its action prior to the first suspension of the Assembly in February 2000, when it withdrew its contacts with Gen de Chastelain's commission.
Ironically, the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, reiterated the words of a past reforming Ulster Unionist leader, Terence O'Neill, when he warned on Thursday that the process "is at a crossroads".
Mr Adams's implied threat is empty. No one here seriously believes that Sinn Fein will pull out of the political process or that the IRA would consider returning to war in support of a Northern Ireland Assembly.