Love an Orange Bastard

The "Love Ulster March" eh? Why wouldn't ya love Ulster? It's great. I went to Donegal on holiday once. Loved it. Had I known there was a march on I would have gone along to recommend it as a holiday destination and so forth. I must make sure to stay informed and go to the Love Lanzarote March when it comes up. Does anyone know when that is?

To be serious for a moment, we don't need to be having marches about how lovely Ulster is. If anything there's too many people loving Ulster. So many in fact that there already isn't enough Ulster to go around. Have you been following this? There's so many people who love Ulster that for years now they haven't wanted to share it. And what happened was that they threatened and intimidated each other and sometimes blew each other up just so they could have the place all for the themselves. While you may not have known this, the organisers certainly did, because the original name of the march was actually "Love Ulster, but I can't stand the neighbours" and for brevity they ended up just calling it the "Love Ulster March". So they really should've known better than to draw attention yet again to its loveliness.

Unfortunately not everyone was supposed to march. It was only the people who not only loved Ulster but also loved that nice old lady who has her face on the money in some parts of Ulster. Now it strikes me as obvious that if anyone loved Ulster, it was those people because despite the fact that some of the neighbours disliked them so much that they engaged in threats and acts of violence; they didn't sell up and move somewhere else. I think that that's what I might have done, but I suppose I don't love Ulster as much as them.

So I'm not so sure a Love Ulster March was necessary. Of course they Love Ulster. But having said that, marches and parades and things are not always done for the sake of making a statement. Sometimes it's worth just celebrating stuff. Like the way we celebrate St. Patrick's Day because we think it's great not having to put up with wiggly snakes anymore (apart from the ones in the zoo). So I suppose that's ok.

For those of you who don't read the news, the love Ulster March didn't go ahead in the end because of a miscommunication as a result of which some people mistakenly believed it was "Re-live the 1916 Rising Day". They thought that the nice people coming down the road were representing the first arrivals of whoever it was we were fighting against back then, then the whole thing got out of hand and in the end neither celebration took place.

That said, there will be a celebration in a couple of months of the 1916 Rising on O'Connell Street (which is looking decidedly tatty at the moment - someone should've warned the Ulster-Lovers what a jock it was in before they arrived) so maybe when that's organised (and they sort O'Connell Street out)they'll let the Love Ulster people come along and join in as well - since their day got all messed up at the weekend. Besides, the 1916 Rising was very much about loving Ulster as well, wasn't it? It was about loving the whole country - even Leitrim. But I think we'll have to have some kind of rule about throwing stuff and nicking the right-foot display-shoes from Footlocker. That's just silly.

And well actually, now that I'm suggesting a few small changes, can we be a little nicer to Charlie Bird as well? There's a perfectly rational explanation: as an international correspondent he spends time in all sorts of climates and this can change the colour of his skin a little bit from time to time. This is no reason to call him an "Orange Bastard" let alone roughing him up and ruining a perfectly nice jacket. Come on now - can't we all just love Charlie, love Ulster, love Lanzarote, love Footlocker, love wheelbarrows and all get along?