Fionnuala O Connor: The tricks memory plays are one thing, but the way political interest wipes chunks of fact and observation is as striking. Keeping that in mind seems appropriate now, when officialdom in various guises - Tony Blair, Chief Constable Hugh Orde, Desmond Rea and Denis Bradley, the Protestant and Catholic who head the Police Board - has begun to push for a "Truth and Reconciliation" body to sign off on the Troubles.
The needs of the bereaved are foremost in mind, we're told, an overriding wish to do honour to the victims. Perish the thought that this is something to fill a political vacuum: pressure for public inquiries is of course irrelevant.
Hugh Orde made his name as investigator for John Stevens, but as chief constable he says there's small hope of proving guilt in old cases and he lacks resources to investigate them.
The proposal, not yet formulated but essentially in view, would draw a line under the past 30 years, granting blanket immunity to paramilitaries and suspect members of security forces yet untried and leaving more than 2,000 murders unsolved - with some of those responsible still in place in Sinn Féin, and probably in the security apparatus of the British government and the Northern police service.
As for the Southern security establishment, let the South look after its own. As they signally failed to do in the aftermath of blood on the streets in Dublin and Monaghan.
There is still no clarity about those bombings: the inquest only begun in the past fortnight and a respectful publication to commemorate the doubly-forgotten dead of Monaghan finally produced as a local initiative.
But then there's little enough clarity about the happenings up the road in Belfast that sunny springtime in 1974.
The bombings came two days into a "Loyalist Workers Strike" which brought down the power-sharing executive headed by unionist Brian Faulkner and nationalist Gerry Fitt. "Coup d'etat" seemed way too grand a name for the result produced by initially shambolic organisers. Overthrow of the state is what it was.
A last victory for unionists, perhaps: so swingeing a blow that no British government plucked up courage to launch a political initiative against their wishes for another 11 years.
Merlyn Rees, secretary of state to the petulant Harold Wilson, whose main contribution was to call the strikers "spongers", seemed not to notice that the police and army gave the strikers control of the streets. Characteristically, some observers noted, Rees wrestled in public with his conscience and lost, his promise to support the power-sharing executive was idle.
Bob Fisk in his first major posting wrote the strike up in a swift book, noting that David McKittrick in this paper was the only journalist to predict correctly that, because of their crucial support in the power stations, the Ulster Workers Council "could bring the North's factories to a halt".
They needed only a few days' grace to gain momentum, and they got it. In that space came the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, which killed more in one day than ever again in the Troubles; traumatising an entire political establishment and stunning public opinion in the Republic.
Some of us who were paid to report what was happening can scarcely credit the soft-centred reminiscence every 10 years since of "Blitz" spirit, fine weather for a fortnight that made being off work so pleasant, cooking on backyard bonfires, the balm of SDLP minister Paddy Devlin's decision that the strikers should get benefits instantly.
More vivid in the reporter's memory bank is the sight of police standing well back from barricades in busy Shaftesbury Square and in quiet country towns, while men with clubs and armbands stopped cars and asked the drivers their destinations, went from door to door and told shopkeepers to close or be burnt out, blocked Larne Harbour and shut down the shipyard.
Well-dressed businessmen queued patiently to get passes for "essential workers". A scrappy protest became a major shutdown, enabled by intimidation on a huge scale. Short Strand and the Markets watched power-sharing dissolve and shivered in the sun at what might follow.
There was nothing folksy or charming about the 30-strong UDA/UVF gang, as Fisk recorded, who set out in two minibuses and a taxi, drinking steadily along the way, to close the Catholic-owned bars around Ballymena. Several burst into a kitchen behind a small rural pub, shot and fatally wounded the two publicans. But overall there was little overt violence. Who would tackle gangs of loyalists given free run of the streets? It happened again in 1996, when the Orange Order supported the Drumcree marchers by paralysing the North.
In the bruised aftermath of the Troubles various truths may gradually emerge - but few seem likely to produce reconciliation.