This weekend Labour party loyalists will once again converge on Llandudno.
The highlight of your year, if you're that way politically inclined, it is the first time supporters, MPs, and MSs have met in such a way since before the pandemic.
Since then Mark Drakeford has become a household name, his party had a Senedd election that surprised even them, and now their attention is turning to council elections in May.
Mr Drakeford was elected as First Minister in December 2018. At that point he said his party's "most radical" days lay ahead.
But that agenda was pushed aside when Covid arrived in Wales. There is no doubt the plans his party had in its manifesto were put to one side. Instead it was Covid that took over every waking minute. Now, with Wales' last legal requirements on Covid expected to end, the Ukraine crisis has seemingly stepped into that void.
Mr Drakeford has not held back in his criticism of Boris Johnson. Mr Drakeford accused the Prime Minister of "disrespecting the people of Wales" and also said there was a "vacancy" at the heart of UK Government. And who can forget him calling the PM "really, really awful" in that S4C documentary?
Read more: The key things we learnt from Mark Drakeford's Welsh Labour conference speech
The First Minister says he doesn't regret any of the many, many public comments he has made about Mr Johnson.
"I think carefully about what I say. I don't say them just off the cuff or anything. It is simply the case that dealing with a Boris Johnson government is very different to dealing with any government that we have faced during the devolution periods. Relations are not what they need to be – particularly if you are looking to secure a positive future for the United Kingdom. "
But this week at the Welsh Affairs Committee in Westminster the First Minister was comparatively restrained. That is not, he told me, a thaw in the frosty relations.
"What I always try to do is if there are good things to say I try to say them. I don't have a plan to always say bad things about the Prime Minister. Sadly there have been too many opportunities to do that. But I was being asked about one of the better parts of what's happened in recent times – the conclusion of the intergovernmental review, started when Mrs May was Prime Minister so you can see is taken an awful lot of time, but in January of this year it was concluded. It is a step forward from where we have been and when there are good things and things to welcome I want to welcome them and that doesn't stop me from punching out where I think there are badly-needed further improvements."
Still speaking of Mr Johnson he did not answer the question: "Do you respect him?" The answer was a pointed: "I respect the office of Prime Minister".
When I told him that didn't answer the question he said: "That's what I have to do. I respect the office of Prime Minister. Different holders of it come and go. I think we have had less direct to do with the current post-holder than any other Prime Minister during devolution. So I've very little to draw in terms of direct meeting and the conduct of the office."
It is "absolutely" right, he said, that the attention has gone away from lockdown parties in Westminster to the situation in Ukraine. "This is not the time to be thinking about that. You want the UK Government to be focused as much as possible on dealing with the dreadful events we see in Ukraine," the First Minister said.
The invasion of Ukraine is now the issue dominating headlines around the world and it should worry people in Wales, Mr Drakeford said.
"I think we should be absolutely right to be worried on a number of different levels. The most serious level is the fact that we are dealing with a state and the leadership of a state that has at their disposal chemical weapons, biological weapons, and are clearly demonstrating that they are prepared to act in ways that would recklessly impact on the rest of the world.
"Of course we should be anxious about that. We have to be anxious in the near term about events in Ukraine themselves, the awful impact it's having on people's lives, and the need for the United Kingdom for Wales to play our part in responding to the humanitarian tragedy. Thirdly we're right to be anxious as well about the impact which events in Ukraine will have on the cost of living crisis that was already there and a matter of huge concern to many people – food prices, fuel prices, all of those things are linked to events in UK. Understandably people are anxious about those things."
It's easy to forget those conversations when he was elected leader about what he wanted to achieve. Now Wales' First Minister's brief is dominated by talk of a pandemic which has killed millions and nuclear weapons. So can he say he enjoys the job?
"I stood for election because I thought I was the person best-prepared to face the challenges that were going to face Wales. So Brexit was front and centre challenge at the time. I believed that because of the years I had spent working in the First Minister's office and myself and so on that gave me the best preparation to face those things.
"And of course nobody expected to face a global pandemic and a European war. But the same basic premise I think will be true that in trying to find the path through all of the very difficult decisions that are linked to those events the fact that I'm able to draw on the experience that I have had in government I think still be the best thing that that I have had to offer."
He would not be drawn on if he thinks he has made Wales a better place since being First Minister.
"I refuse to say yes to that only because the experience of the past two years has been such a difficult, demanding experience for so many people. I don't want to say anything that makes me sound somehow triumphant about what I've been able to do during the time that I've been in this job.
"I hope that in doing the job I have been able to help people to deal with, respond, to come through that experience in the best way that we can. I don't want to say anything suggests that I am in any way devaluing the challenge that people have had to face in their own lives and what it has been like to live in Wales while we are facing a global pandemic together."
He repeatedly said he would not serve another term as a First Minister and planned to announce in the second half of his term – from 2023 onwards – what his timetable for handing over the baton was. Despite the ticks next to the 2018 wishlist being sorely lacking he will stick to that plan.
"I haven't changed my plan – I still intend to be in a position during the second part of this Senedd term to be able to hand the leadership of the Labour Party and the Senedd onto a successor who will be there to take Wales into the next period."
And when will he announce that date? "I don't spend my time thinking about that," he said.
"I will be the First Minister in the fullest sense of that term until the day I decide it is right to hand it on. When you are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and when you're dealing with Ukraine none of what I spend my day doing is contemplating about when I will be standing down. I am First Minister and will carry on being First Minister until the time comes."
He admitted he expects his successor to be from his cabinet. "I think it is very likely that the next First Minister will be found from people who have cabinet experience. Of course it's your job when you when you offer jobs to provide people with experiences that prepare them for what they might want to do next. It's a responsibility of the job to make sure that people are being given the opportunity so when the time comes and they want to make their case to the membership of the Labour Party that they've got what they need to draw on."
Despite rumours in Labour circles of names like economy minster Vaughan Gething or education minister Jeremy Miles in pole position at this stage no-one, he said, has told him they intend to stand.
Back to the here and now he is First Minister of a country where children will tonight go to bed hungry and their parents will worry how they will feed or clothe them.
"Other than the crises we've talked about that is absolutely our main preoccupation as a government," said Mr Drakeford.
"We can do many things directly and we are doing. In Wales decisions made by successive Welsh Governments means money in people's pockets. On the other side of the border people are having to find before they face the cost of living crisis.
"From April 1 if you live in England you'll be paying £9.35 for every prescription. Here in Wales people don't face that dilemma. If you're the poorest family in the land in England you're paying an average £200 in council tax you don't pay that here in Wales. Already actions taken by successive Welsh Governments mean people have more in their pockets to deal with other shocks than you would without the action of Welsh Government."
However I put to him that his party has been in power in Wales for 22 years and there are still children living in poverty while there are other big social questions, particularly about health and education standards.
"I don't agree with what you've just said. Of course the health service over the last two years has been heroic," he said.
I interject to tell him that of course it has but there are still a lot of people waiting for services that they're not getting.
"The health service has been responding to the global pandemic and has been doing its best with the same people being relied upon all the time to refocus itself to deal with the battles that have built up in every part of the United Kingdom where there are different parties in power. The record of my party has been a record that people in Wales have been prepared to endorse in successive elections and did so again."
That is not because they don't seen alternative or a credible opposition?
"No because they had many alternatives at the last election. They have a Conservative Party that is the best-resourced party anywhere and is in power in the United Kingdom. They could have voted for a nationalist party which in Scotland their sister party is in power there. Of course there are choices people are able to make in Wales. People don't just vote Labour because they haven't got anybody else. They vote Labour because they turn up, they go to the ballot box, and choose to vote for the Labour Party and they do that because they see successive Labour governments making the biggest difference in their lives."
Over the years he has said that hardest bit of his job is seeing those children in poverty. When asked the hardest part of the pandemic he said it was knowing first-hand that children in his own patch, the Cardiff West constituency, would be going without at Christmas.
So I asked him: "There is no doubt that there are still poor kids in this country in the years that your party and you have been in government. Is that something that makes you angry or sad or frustrated? How does that make you feel?"
He replied: "It absolutely makes me angry that there are children growing up in Wales living in poverty. The Welsh Government has taken [action] and in this term we will have free school meals for every child in our primary schools.
"We have money in the budget that was passed only on Tuesday into those parts of education that mean the cost of the school day that means the struggling families who struggle the most get help directly from the Welsh Government.
"But those families are poor because the UK Government has imposed a 10-year austerity programme in which the benefits those people rely on, the wages that people at the bottom end of the spectrum rely on, have been held down year after year. A government that took £20 every week out of households that need the most, where there are children at the most [risk].
"That's where the focus needs to be directed and we do everything we can to mitigate poverty and to eliminate it".
He will be joined in Llandudno by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. A firm supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, when asked how often they are in touch Mr Drakeford said their offices are in touch every week but that Sir Keir is "very approachable and very available".
The Labour masses are busy planning a chance to catch up and as they arrived on Friday the intention was to watch Wales v France in the Six Nations over a drink. But when asked the First Minister said while he would definitely be watching the game he didn't know his counterpart's plans.
There are murmurings that the First Minister's "us and them" approach to England is causing some concern in the Westminster ranks.
The Labour family may be converging on Llandudno but whether it is a happy and united family reunion will only be clear on Sunday afternoon.
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