LET ME SLEEP!

I am not usually a fan of rain but I'm happy to say the past two Saturdays have been amongst the wettest, most dismal August days I remember in all history. Why does this please me? Well at 9am both days I have been rudely dragged from my bed, although already awake, by that most nauseating of sounds, peculiar only to sad sectarian places such as Scotland and Northern Ireland, a mix of deep thudding drums and cheap squeaky whistles - a combination that can only mean the lunatics have escaped the asylum once more to parade their orange nonsense on our streets under my bedroom window. Why don't they just crawl back under their stone and finally realize that the world doesn't need this kind of negativity? I am happy to say I am free from religion and all its dark undertones, I did however come from a family that was Protestant a generation or two ago, and despite that spent years happy and loved in the midst of a French Catholic family - celebrating our similarities and differences. I don't think anyone can fully understand that sinister side of what was loosely termed religion unless they grew up in Scotland or Northern Ireland during the 1970s, watching night after night people killing and maiming supposedly for the sake of their faith. If that is faith, I am happy to have none. I guess the only heartening thing to be taken from the fact that these morons are still feeling the need to waken me up on a Saturday morning in the noughties is the size of the march. Anyone who saw a march in the 70s will be surprised to see the pitiful handful of people out the last two Saturdays. In my childhood a march could hold up the whole city's traffic for an afternoon, nowadays, blink and you'll miss them.