You wait forever for Nicola Sturgeon to make a contribution at Holyrood and it turns out to be her final speech as an MSP.
The budding media darling, former first minister, and occasional parliamentarian popped up on Thursday, during the third-stage consideration of the Children (Scotland) Bill.
With a sometimes trembling voice, she ventured some advice while admitting she 'had not always lived by these principles'.
They were mostly quote-a-day-calendar bromides ('keep a sense of perspective', 'do not forget to think for yourself'), plus a clunky Americanism - 'reach across the aisle' - that suggested she was leaving not only Holyrood but the cast of The West Wing.
Then there were the Alan Partridge-worthy musings that confirmed the former first minister has gone full no-contact with her sense of self-awareness. As a gospel, 'Do not live life on social media' gets a hearty 'amen' from me, but it's difficult to keep a straight face when it's the selfie queen doing the preaching.
She remarked that the current session of Holyrood was 'the most fractious and divided that I have served in'.
One day, the Sturgeon who frets about division and discourse might encounter the Sturgeon who handed ministerial power to the Greens, tried to eliminate women's sex-based rights, and told parliament Scotland was 'being treated like something on the sole of Westminster's shoe', and if that day ever comes the universe will surely implode.
It's tempting to chortle at the woman who attempted to legislate away rights guaranteed in the Equality Act declaring that equality is 'the thread running through everything that I have sought to champion and achieve', but there isn't all that much to laugh about in Sturgeon's record.
The attainment gap she made it her priority to close yawns still. The emissions targets she assured us were vital to avoid ecological disaster were missed and missed again.
The procurement of a couple of ferries that brought the nationalisation of a shipyard and the ignominy of posing before an unfinished boat with painted-on windows.
The complacency that allowed Scotland to become the drugs deaths capital of Europe. The high-handed secrecy of deleted Covid-era messages and her unconvincing performance during the Holyrood inquiry.
Even to her own side, she offered one disappointment after another. For all that I and others similarly minded had a conniption every time she 'banged on about independence', that's all she ever did -- talk about it.
Handed the 2015 'yellow tsunami', Brexit, the Internal Market Act, chaos and sleaze at Westminster, and a cost-of-living crisis, she could parlay none of these opportunities into a second referendum.
Instead, the leader of Scottish nationalism conceded that independence was a matter of constitutional law by placing the question before the Supreme Court, knowing only one outcome was possible. That she has yet to appear on the Honours list for services to the Union is an injustice.
There is plenty damning to be done with that list of failings but, as I have argued before, they pale compared to her dismal stewardship of an institution she was always keen to tell us she loved: the NHS.
As both health secretary and first minister, Sturgeon made grand promises about NHS waiting times. What became of them?
There are too many to cover here but the 12-week target for outpatient appointments is illustrative of the rest.
Ninety-five per cent of new outpatients were supposed to be seen within 12 weeks of referral. When Sturgeon left Bute House at the end of March 2023, this standard was being met in just 63 per cent of cases. A mere 32 points off-target.
Ah but, Sturgeon's defenders cavil, this merely reflects the lingering impact of Covid-19 on a health service still in recovery.
So, let's look at the figures for the final quarter of 2019, before NHS Scotland was placed on a pandemic footing. If Covid is the reason Sturgeon failed to meet her own targets, we should expect the pre-Covid statistics to show 95 per cent or more patients being seen on time.
The actual figure: 77 per cent. Off by 18 points.
And because Sturgeon's apologists are an implacable bunch, they might contend that the figures for October to December 2019 will have been distorted by the pressures of winter flu. So I had a look at the numbers for July to September.
Wouldn't you know, the figure was the same: 77 per cent. At some point, the excuses just run out.
When first she reached the summit of Scottish politics, I had high hopes for her. Alex Salmond's blokey, bellicose persona was not to my tastes at all. She seemed like a breath of fresh air.
I would plead the ignorance of youth, but I stopped qualifying for that defence some time ago.
We all want to believe the latest political fad is different to the ones that went before. No matter how many times we are let down, we convince ourselves this one really cares and will actually do what they promise.
I hate to break it to you, but the politician you're currently enthused about, the one you think has all the answers, is almost certainly another fad. Prepare to be let down again.
The problem, or one of the big ones, is the gulf between what political leaders promise and what they deliver. Nicola Sturgeon could almost be a case study.
whether on waiting times or the attainment gap, the Ferguson Marine ferries or climate change, drugs deaths or independence, her leadership was defined by promises made with rhetoric and unmade in results.
There is an irony in Sturgeon’s last remarks to Holyrood being on The Promise, an undertaking given during her time as First Minister to improve the lives of care-experienced children and adults. It is the one regard in which I think she made an unambiguously positive contribution to national life, and for a class of people who were for the longest time written off, if even considered at all.
The word ‘trauma’ gets overused but for young people today and older people in the past, their lived experience (another overused phrase) was one of multiple traumas. The trauma of family breakdown; the trauma of being abruptly chucked into the system; the trauma, for some, of abuse and maltreatment; and the trauma of official indifference to them and their lives.
Sturgeon was the first person in power who bothered to meet them, to learn their names, and most importantly to listen. Whether The Promise is achieved, or proves to be just more rhetoric, is an open question.
She broke so many promises and while keeping this one would not make up for all the others, it would at least be a legacy to look back on without the pangs of regret that even she must feel.
There are substantial numbers of people in this country who hate Nicola Sturgeon. The very mention of her name is enough to set their teeth on edge.
I'm not one of them. I think she was a terrible first minister and cast a baneful spell over Scottish politics and public life.
With the exception of her championing of care-experienced people, I suspect Scotland would be a better place today if she had never darkened the door of the Scottish Parliament.
But I can't hate her. In my eyes, she is a tragic figure, an object lesson in the pursuit of office for its own sake. In the incalculable waste of time and opportunity and resources that follows when a limited political imagination gets almost unlimited access to the levers of state.
All that power, all that potential, all that promise -- all for nothing.