The North’s marching season — a unique blend of parades, holiday fun and increased crime rates
WE'RE now into what’s called the marching season in Northern Ireland.
You might imagine from that phrase that this is a time at which everyone takes to the roads, striding about to keep fit or to demonstrate their rhythmic pacing, their ability to strut and puff.
It is also the season in which huge numbers of people simply clear off.
Orangemen march, Protestants come out to watch and wave and Catholics head off on holiday, if not out of the country then to the Antrim coast or Donegal.
When Protestants get away they dip their toes in the briny of Bangor and beyond or Portrush.
Whisper it, but I fear that Belfast becomes a burglar’s paradise in ‘Twelfth Fortnight’. You can tell by the free parking spaces where people are not at home.
As a child I was mesmerised by the Twelfth, the day of the big march. I lived close to the field in which they congregated at the end of their footsore trudge through the city. My mother and father wanted me to stay away from them but the rise of the banners in the breeze and the thunder of the bands drew me to them.
There was money to be made from the discarded lemonade bottles, 3d on each returned to the shop. And there were insights available into a strange people from housing estates and roads we regarded as alien. We saw men in their groups drinking beer and ignoring the political speeches and sermons from the stage. That one image countered every presumption that this was all about politics and religion and the overlap between them.
This year I am on the north coast in Ballycastle. I started school here many years ago.
My grandfather was the coastguard and the tower from which he surveyed the shipping is now a holiday let.
This is a fascinating part of the country. Scenically it is glorious, largely because the land exploded here millions of years ago. Our local volcano, Knocklayde has since been smoothed to look more like a drumlin by ice that, ten thousand years ago, was a mile and a half thick. If you look across at Rathlin island the cliff face is like a layered biscuit, with white limestone topped by granite.
That limestone is composed of millions of years of fishbones that accumulated at the bottom of the sea.
From here I can see the Mull of Kintyre and from where the road turns down to Ballintoy harbour I see Islay due north on a clear day. To my mind this proximity of Scotland and the ancient landscape both in their ways belittle the presumptions of an ephemeral cultural identity or any constitutional sense of certainty. One day we’ll all be gone but the waves will continue to lap at the shore. But who’s going to listen to an argument like that as an argument for political moderation?
This area has been hugely invested in for tourism, mostly in the golf course at Portrush and the Giant’s Causeway, where the lava cooled so quickly that it formed into hexagonal pillars not unlike the sponge-like rocks you see in Tenerife.
But the town of Bushmills tells you that identity is more important than income available from tourism.
Bushmills has some fine dining. It’s a gorgeous wee town a little back from the coast and at this time of year it is so richly decked in union jacks that it might as well have a sign up saying, Catholics, Pass By.
One night I went with my wife and her mother to a restaurant there, one of the best in the country, and the first trundle of drumming reached our ears as we were selecting dessert. By the time we left we were cut off from the car park by a long - very long - band parade, with big drums beating out the glory of Protestant Ulster.
It was the sort of situation in which you put on your neutral face. You don’t want to appear to be joining in the enthusiasm all around you and endorsing it, but neither do you want anyone to think you look uneasy, or worse, disdainful.
We endured this for about an hour and then made it to the car. We couldn’t simply leave town the way we came in so, taking another route we asked a policeman on traffic duty for directions to Ballycastle.
He understood and told us of inland country roads and the turnings to take. It was hardly the scenic route but it got us back to where we felt we more belonged.
Ballycastle is interesting for its independent shops. Other high streets around the country have come to look alike with the same chainstore fronts. Ballycastle retains its character.
I started school here in the early 1950s with the nuns of the Cross and Passion. And indeed they were often cross and impassioned.
The Orangemen march here too though Protestants are a minority in this town and occasionally there is trouble as bandsmen and angry observers taunt each other and the police struggle to keep them apart.
“Nothing strange about that,” my da would say. “Trouble like that is as old as the hills.”
Not quite.
