SO there I am, just after eight o’clock last night, walking past the north end of St George’s Hall in Liverpool, and heading for the BBC studios in Hanover Street.
I hear a tremendous racket, shrill pipes and drums, and sure enough a MASSIVE Orange Parade comes into my field of vision on Lime Street.
Instantly I get a memory of a summer’s day some 40-odd years ago when I was just a lad and my dad had brought me from our home in Wigan to Liverpool to see the pictures in the Walker. He was that sort of dad, bless him.
What dad and I witnessed back then was, of course, an Orange march. It was probably a 12th of July parade (just like the one I saw yesterday), held to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne.
As a kid I was baffled and a bit frightened by what I saw and heard on the way to the art gallery that day. To a small boy it seemed very aggressive.

The only thing remotely like it in my experience as a lad was the Whit walking days held in Wigan, when parishes would walk in procession with banners of the Sacred Heart and Our Lady and the Holy Family, each with loads of ribbons trailing, and each ribbon having a crepe-soled child at the end of it.
Except that during our walking days the music was not aggressive in tone, and our walks were – even now I think this – much more beautiful than any Orange parade.
That is not to belittle the Orange men and women. No, not at all. They have every right to march in public declaration of their religious and political heritage.
My dad, at that earlier Orange parade I saw at the end of the 1960s, told me that these marchers, with their noisy music and orange sashes and bowler hats, were Orangemen. Protestants, in fact. “They are bad people,” he added.
Well, perhaps he would say that. At the time the Troubles had just started in the North of Ireland and Catholics over there were being denied their civil rights by the Protestant and Unionist rulers.
Whenever my late father encountered anything he considered “bad” he always named it as such.
For instance, with damnable reiteration, I was told: "Communists are bad people, Stephen, very bad".
Now, by all that is true, good and human, I swear he was he right about the Communists. Thank God they have been swept from political power in Europe.
But I don’t believe dad was right about the Orange men and women being bad. Oh, I’m sure some of them were, but within any sort of community that is true.
I know that the Orange Lodge members today are as vehemently opposed to Catholics as ever they were.
As a Catholic I can’t be expected to feel happy about that but, as I say, everyone has a right to express and protect their religious heritage.
When I saw the march in Liverpool yesterday, I no longer found it aggressive. Jaunty perhaps, defiant in tone maybe, but not threatening, not directly anyway.
Perhaps if I had yelled out to the passing marchers “Love Live the Pope!” I might have met some hostility, but I didn’t do that because it would have been rude and provocative.
I don’t want to spoil the Orange people’s parade, and I hope they wouldn’t want to spoil mine either, no matter what bitter strife has gone on between us Catlicks and the Prods in the past.
If you want to know the truth, I was quite impressed that so many Protestants in Liverpool, young and old alike, could bother to turn out to give witness to a branch of Christianity.
And the sight of so many solid, working class people in Liverpool giving pubic expression to something they are proud of, as I saw yesterday, is kind of heartening, because we are living in an era when working class pride and dignity don’t seem to count for very much.
However, at the risk of spoiling the party atmosphere, I must point out that the Roman Catholic Church has recently declared that Protestant and Orthodox denominations are “not proper churches”.
In a document which will have all ecumenical activists choking on their teatime slice of Victoria sponge, the Vatican has issued a 16-page document saying that the “defects” of non-Catholic churches constitute a major obstacle to Christian unity.
The statement said that the Orthodox church suffered from a “wound” because it did not recognise the primacy of the Pope. The wound was “still more profound” in Protestant denominations, it added.
It was “difficult to see how the title of ‘Church’ could possibly be attributed to them”, said the statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which carries the full authority of that charismatic world superstar, Pope Benedict.
Roman Catholicism was “the one true Church of Christ”, the document reaffirmed.
Oh, well back to the drawing board, you lads and lasses of the church unity movement.
It won’t affect the Orange people, though. They were never ecumenically minded.

*** Back to memories of walking days for a minute... In Wigan all the Roman Catholic parishes used to join together for a huge walk around the town during the 1960s and even into the 1970s, I think.
We Catholics would first gather in the Market Square with our banners and many statues garlanded in flowers.
Under the baton of an honorary “conductor” (usually the rugby league legend Billy Boston) the massed brass bands would strike up with “Faith of our Fathers”, an expression of homage to England’s martyred Catholic dead.
Then, just to prove we were as loyal to our country as any of our Protestant neighbours, we would sing enthusiastically along to "God Save the Queen".
After that, the big walk would start and what a splendid sight it was. All our Protestant and Free Church neighbours would line up on the pavements and throw tanners and threepenny bits as gifts for the children on the walk.
In the days that followed, we Catholic people would do the same for the Christian kids of other denominations when they held their walking days. Even the Methodists had walking days in Wigan, though theirs, I recall, were generally considered "a poor show".
I think things used to be the same in Warrington and St Helens and parts of Manchester, but I’m not sure about Liverpool. Perhaps readers will enlighten me.
Anyway to all good people of belief – Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and all the others – I say, keep the faith and God bless you.
And to all good people those who say they don’t believe in any God, and prefer to put their faith in humanity’s endeavours (very silly), I say two things.
(1) Without God, there is no humanity. Where do you think your core values come from?
(2) Wake up and smell the coffee. Religion is on the march all around the world – and it's a trend that's going to continue.

PS at the top of this piece, I mentioned I had been en route to the BBC studios in Liverpool. In case anyone is wondering, I go there each Thursday evening to record a review of the week’s news, in poetic form, which is broadcast at around 6.45am or 6.50am each Friday on the Breakfast show.
PPS Writers of poetry and short prose are welcome to attend the poetry club which I organise for each first Monday of the month at the Little Brighton Inn (‘The Ginny’) in Rowson Street, New Brighton. We are called The Bards of New Brighton, and we are developing nicely and producing some very good work. I hope we can publish an anthology soon and we are also considering a theatrical production featuring monologues, poems and music.
The next meeting at the pub is on Mon 6 Aug, starting at 8.30pm. We are a friendly and supportive group, so do come along and read something.

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