Flickring Interesting

William, Mary & Ollie, originally uploaded by NellyMoser.

Harry de Cat Tries To Ruin Christmas (And Fails)

For me Christmas began at 4pm on Christmas Day. The earlier part of the day had been spent in Spide City and all was quiet there. The very good people from The Wash Basin were hosting Christmas Dinner for our customers so I had a quiet moment or two that I spent with magazines and its just as well I did as I came across two very important pieces of advice that were to stand me in good stead for the holidays. These were -

1. The secret of enjoying Christmas is to have very low expectations.
2. When dealing with pet urine stains on mattresses go easy on the moisture, heavy on the borax.

Eventually I was free and as I drove towards Cully I could feel the tension mount. Would Bert have remembered the roast potatoes? Would they pass the Zoë test of approval? But I kept saying to myself ‘low expectations, low expectations.’

I got in to find Bert playing a blinder in the kitchen. All was going well and the roast potatoes were sorted. . Then there were big hugs for Katy and Mark. Zoë and Dave had not turned up yet. And where was Hannah? Katy breaks the bad news. The Wean is very ill, has not been up all day and Harry de Cat has pissed on her bed.

Hannah is very ill just because she is and it has nothing at all to do with the big feed of drink she took on Christmas Eve. She has decanted herself into the freshly appointed bed intended for Zoë et al and I go upstairs to pet her and be sympathetic and to put my new tips about dealing with cat piss into action. By 4.20pm I am ready to start Christmas and by this time Zoë, her beloved and their new baby have arrived. We do present opening and I am very pleased with all my presents.

Dinner was good but Hannah was unable to partake. She went back to bed with a couple of flu tablets. After about an hours sleep she got up and requested Yule Log (homemade by Zoë), which soon set her on the road to recovery.

After that Christmas was the usual whirl of chocolate, alcohol, family, turkey, wall-to-wall dogs and chocolate. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now I have a confession to make. Since moving into this house I have not read a single book. I suppose I’ve been too distracted. So I had decided to get stuck into one over Christmas. But which one? For I have a yard or more of unread books. I took inspiration from Jimmy Porter who said that the two worst books he read in 2005 were The Lovely Bones and The Time Traveller’s Wife. I’d read The Lovely Bones a couple of years ago and liked it a lot so I reasoned that if Jimmy hated it and I loved it then I’d probably appreciate The Time Traveller’s Wife too. Finished it a couple of hours ago and thought it was pretty enjoyable. I can see Johnny Depp playing Henry in the movie. Thanks for the tip Jimmy.

It's Not Just Funny Hats Y'Know

Anybody who reads this blog knows that it is usually packed with whimsy and fluff relating to pretty flowers, doggies and me ma. But having been stuck in Harryville (Spide City) over the Twelfth I have had a bit of an overdose of Ly'list Culcher and have been taking lots of ironic photos 'n all. See Flickr.

So when Lost Identity asked me what my opinion was on the whole carry-on I had to reply. Now anybody who reads this blog will know that, unlike some of my fellow bloggers, my opinions tend to be as mild as milk and this one will be no exception. So if I get a lot of mad ly'lists and Orange apologists attacking me for them I shall be ever so upset and stick to writing about whimsy and fluff until Christmas when, as is my traditional route, I will become an anti-consumerist Scrooge who will rant non-stop about the crapness of Christmas before rushing out and spending £17,000 on tat.

As I said in comments there are a lot more than two sides to this story. But this is the way I see it.

(And at this point I was interrupted by Ploppy Pants who happens to be an Independent Orangeman but more of that later)

I was brought up a Catholic in County Antrim, which, like County Down would be one of the more Protestant counties of Northern Ireland. Our parents expected us to respect our neighbours. Neither hate nor sectarianism was taught in our home. Neverthesless I remember the Orange marches then as being oppressive and not for us. The 'Marching Season' was seen as their celebration, their party, one to which we weren't welcome.

Now it seems to me that the Orange celebrations are not as mainstream as they were. Thirty, Forty years ago the Order was much more popular and included Protestant people from all spheres of society. Nowadays the professional and middle classes are less represented. The rural lodges are dying off. The only lodges that are surviving are those from the loyalist working class areas of towns and cities.

The future? On the surface the parades are all about costumes, raucous military style bands and a fun day out. They're also about sombre faced Orange men and women walking their 'traditional routes' and remembering a battle from a 17th century political and cultural movement that few have any knowledge of. Underneath it's the same old story - sectarianism and exclusion.

That said I still would not support the violence of some of those protesting against the parades. Apart from everything else it only fans the flames. Perhaps if the parades were let be they'd fade away in time - or grow into something more inclusive. And pigs might fly. But I don't live in a flashpoint area - what do I know?

Ol' Ploppy Pants and I had a coffee and a conversation about all this stuff. Naturally we mostly disagreed on what the Orange Order actually is. He told me something interesting things about the Independent Loyal Orange Institution which broke away from the main Orange Order in 1903. The breakaway happened because the established Orange Order was inextricably tied up with the ruling classes, the political elite and big business interests. In fact one of the ILOI's mottoes is 'Protestantism not Politics'. PP said that at that time the people who broke away were evicted from their homes, sacked from their jobs and generally ostracised. He said that some of this ill feeling exists to this day. As recently as Tuesday when Independents and Old School met in Portglenone they were still either glaring at or looking through each other.

Here are two more interesting snippets I turned up while doing a bit of sketchy research for this post.

• The Independents' unionism and loyalty to the British crown is dependent on the constitutional monarch being Protestant. No shit?
• The original Orange Order only allowed Presbyterians to join in the 1840s.

There is an article on Orangeism on Wikipedia.
It's neutrality is in dispute.

Frankie and Nelly

My legs hurt. She Who Must Be Obeyed said it's not the distance walked that counts but the speed employed. So this evening Francis Joseph Banjo and I headed up the Dreen Road at some speed. It was Paddy's turn to be walked but Rosie and he were being scunging devil dogs again and were off on some rabbit-bothering expedition. It wasn't marching up the road that made my old joints ache. It was the descent that did the damage. Nevertheless after a short recovery period I took Frankie out through Bert's Baby Wood for another walk. Frankie is a very short dog. His little legs are only about four inches long. Consequently when he is being walked through long grass be bounces along as if he is on springs. This is very amusing to watch. Now about two-thirds of the way into Bert's Infant Wood there is a little drain or sheugh*. Frankie is a dog of very little brain and usually falls into the sheugh. This evening he jumped over it on the outgoing journey but missed it on the return and fell in. When I got back I suggested to Bert that he should take Frankie over the field a run before he gets too wise to the sheugh. Bert did take him over and reported a very satisfactory result.

"He fell in. Twice!"

*Sheugh - pronounced shuck And bearing that pronunciation in mind here's part of what I had to listen to last night outside my bedroom window in Spide City.

Girl: Ye feughing did! Boy: I feughing didn't! Girl: Ye feughing did! Boy: I feughing didn't!

And so on until Girl spots someone she knows,

Girl: Ya'right Maggie!

Then:

Girl: Ye feughing did! Boy: I feughing did'n.....

Fade into blessed distance feughing and blinding as they went.