The Orange Walk
by Jack O'Donnell
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: Some strong ones.
Description: Not so glorious memories of the Glorious Twelfth.
_____________________________________________________________________
It was the 12th July and Granda was in rant mode.
‘It’s no the same now, son. You cannae even hear a pipe band now. In my day it was massive and although I don’t like saying it bigger than Christmas in the View. Just as you’d put your tree up 12 days before Christmas, although nothing was ever said, or needed to be said, men, women and children made themselves ready.
‘I was only a wee boy, but I could still fire a catapult. The big boy up the stair, Wullie Feeney, showed me how to make a shite bomb. It was one stone with a bit of shite in the middle and another stone on top so you didnae get your hands dirty. Only, I did and more than my hands. Until I mastered it I was fair reeking. Your mum couldnae just fling you in the bath, because we didn’t have baths. We only had the Public Baths, at Hall Street and that cost a penny. And I didnae have a penny. I didnae even have much shite. There were no dogs in the View in those days. Everybody wanted a dog like Lassie, but a pound of mince could just as well feed a grown family and the choice between an extra bairn and an intelligent dog that could practically talk was no a difficult one to make in any Catholic household. Lassie was welcome to visit the View from America, as long as he didnae stay and knew his way home. So the shite didn’t smell that bad because it was my ain.’
Granda said that with a satisfying nod, as if he had helped solve the problem of gravity.
‘The better shots among us were the ones that could get mair shite per inch of stone. That way when you hit shiny Orangemen’s uniforms the shite spread was larger and more consistent. It was especially effective if you hit the bits of gold braid. You couldnae really miss.
‘You’d time to get ready as you’d hear the music from afar. Then you’d see the first few punters casually strolling ahead with their bottles of Lanliq and Eldorado, eyeballing you, before retreating back into the safety of the crowd quicker than a Hungarian centre forward within sight of goal.
‘I’d rather cut my tongue out than say his name – Billy McCall – was desperate that the Orange March was to get right by us and down Dumbarton Road and down by Our Holy Redeemer’s Church. There’d been windows broken and all kinds of obscenities shouted at the poor priests in the past. We were equally determined that they would take another route.
‘At first there had been a bit of rough and tumble, but we’d let them past, we let them have their fun. Our jobs, our livelihoods depended on these bastards that were mocking us, mocking our faith. Some of the men even nodded at those they worked with. That all changed when Mattie Holland intervened.
‘Now Mattie was a wee barrel of a woman. If you picked her up by the legs you could roll her down a set of stairs without hurting a bone. She was small even by The View standards, where any woman over five feet was called big. So if Mattie had been over five feet she would have been called big Mattie. But being big wasnae just in terms of size as Mattie showed. She was a placid woman; a holy wee woman, that went to seven am Mass every day, like so many other wee women. If Judas Iscariot had been brought up by Mattie he would have turned out all right. But there was something in her that was fearless.
‘I don’t remember when if first happened. Men, women and children, all drunk, were singing and dancing along the road. It was the usual ‘We are the Billy Boys’ shite. But that wasnae enough for them. One of them picked up a stone and flung it through the stained glass window of Our Holy Redeemer’s. There was a pause when even the band music itself seemed to stop and both sides looked at each other. And in that pause another stone was thrown, but before it even got half way to the stain glass window, Mattie Holland’s red hair stood on end like a cockerel’s helmet, so that she seemed to grow six inches. I don’t know if she said “charge”, but we knew what she meant. All that sitting back and letting them walk all over you was finished. Every man, woman and child, that wasn’t in a pram, from the View attacked like holy dervishes, fell on them like cannibals that hadn’t been fed in a good long while. Police horses and batons couldn’t even separate us from them.
‘Aye, those were the days son,’ Granda said, failing into a light slumber.
Swearwords: Some strong ones.
Description: Not so glorious memories of the Glorious Twelfth.
_____________________________________________________________________
It was the 12th July and Granda was in rant mode.
‘It’s no the same now, son. You cannae even hear a pipe band now. In my day it was massive and although I don’t like saying it bigger than Christmas in the View. Just as you’d put your tree up 12 days before Christmas, although nothing was ever said, or needed to be said, men, women and children made themselves ready.
‘I was only a wee boy, but I could still fire a catapult. The big boy up the stair, Wullie Feeney, showed me how to make a shite bomb. It was one stone with a bit of shite in the middle and another stone on top so you didnae get your hands dirty. Only, I did and more than my hands. Until I mastered it I was fair reeking. Your mum couldnae just fling you in the bath, because we didn’t have baths. We only had the Public Baths, at Hall Street and that cost a penny. And I didnae have a penny. I didnae even have much shite. There were no dogs in the View in those days. Everybody wanted a dog like Lassie, but a pound of mince could just as well feed a grown family and the choice between an extra bairn and an intelligent dog that could practically talk was no a difficult one to make in any Catholic household. Lassie was welcome to visit the View from America, as long as he didnae stay and knew his way home. So the shite didn’t smell that bad because it was my ain.’
Granda said that with a satisfying nod, as if he had helped solve the problem of gravity.
‘The better shots among us were the ones that could get mair shite per inch of stone. That way when you hit shiny Orangemen’s uniforms the shite spread was larger and more consistent. It was especially effective if you hit the bits of gold braid. You couldnae really miss.
‘You’d time to get ready as you’d hear the music from afar. Then you’d see the first few punters casually strolling ahead with their bottles of Lanliq and Eldorado, eyeballing you, before retreating back into the safety of the crowd quicker than a Hungarian centre forward within sight of goal.
‘I’d rather cut my tongue out than say his name – Billy McCall – was desperate that the Orange March was to get right by us and down Dumbarton Road and down by Our Holy Redeemer’s Church. There’d been windows broken and all kinds of obscenities shouted at the poor priests in the past. We were equally determined that they would take another route.
‘At first there had been a bit of rough and tumble, but we’d let them past, we let them have their fun. Our jobs, our livelihoods depended on these bastards that were mocking us, mocking our faith. Some of the men even nodded at those they worked with. That all changed when Mattie Holland intervened.
‘Now Mattie was a wee barrel of a woman. If you picked her up by the legs you could roll her down a set of stairs without hurting a bone. She was small even by The View standards, where any woman over five feet was called big. So if Mattie had been over five feet she would have been called big Mattie. But being big wasnae just in terms of size as Mattie showed. She was a placid woman; a holy wee woman, that went to seven am Mass every day, like so many other wee women. If Judas Iscariot had been brought up by Mattie he would have turned out all right. But there was something in her that was fearless.
‘I don’t remember when if first happened. Men, women and children, all drunk, were singing and dancing along the road. It was the usual ‘We are the Billy Boys’ shite. But that wasnae enough for them. One of them picked up a stone and flung it through the stained glass window of Our Holy Redeemer’s. There was a pause when even the band music itself seemed to stop and both sides looked at each other. And in that pause another stone was thrown, but before it even got half way to the stain glass window, Mattie Holland’s red hair stood on end like a cockerel’s helmet, so that she seemed to grow six inches. I don’t know if she said “charge”, but we knew what she meant. All that sitting back and letting them walk all over you was finished. Every man, woman and child, that wasn’t in a pram, from the View attacked like holy dervishes, fell on them like cannibals that hadn’t been fed in a good long while. Police horses and batons couldn’t even separate us from them.
‘Aye, those were the days son,’ Granda said, failing into a light slumber.
About the Author
Jack O'Donnell was born in Helensburgh and now lives in Clydebank with his partner, Mary. He claims to be fat, balding and middle-aged.
Jack writes for fun and has a blog at http://www.abctales.com/blog/celticman, which he also claims no-one ever reads.
Jack writes for fun and has a blog at http://www.abctales.com/blog/celticman, which he also claims no-one ever reads.