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Extract from 'The Craic'
In the morning there was frost on the fields and mist lurking in the hollows. Walking down the lane from my lodgings I was stopped and quizzed at an army checkpoint. My English accent revealed that I wasn't a hired heavy going to join the mob and I was let through.

When I arrived in Bellaghy's little main street, I had never seen so many policemen in my life. There was one every two yards, on both sides of the road, from the Manse at one end of the little town to the Protestant church at the other, a distance of what, a good half-mile. In the side streets were the spooky-looking blue-grey Saracens, two parked up in the little close where the main organiser of the Concerned Residents lived.

Just down from the Manse, where the marchers and band were now assembling, the media were already in place, rubbing their hands and cracking jokes in the chill November air. The centre of the group was the well-known BBC presenter Dennis Murray, plumply resplendent in a padded crimson windjacket and sending himself up, as media folk do. 'Is Lord Murray of Gobshite going to be present? Well then it must be important.'

"We just want it all to go quietly," said one of the pack, with a wink.

Now, from the side road opposite ('a Nationalist estate') two or three scowling teenaged lads appeared, loping along with an odd mixture of defiance and uncertainty. They were followed by three little boys of ten or so, one in a united Ireland sweatshirt; they weren't smiling either. And here, down the middle of the road, were the Gilmours, smartly turned out in dark blue coats and poppies, with wee Stuart in his Boys' Brigade uniform between them.

"You wouldn't know us now," said John out of the corner of his mouth (a remark I wasn't quite sure how to take).

I followed them up to the front drive of the Manse, where the rest of the marchers were gathering, piling out of cars in their spic-and-span navy uniforms. I chatted to a bald gent with a fine row of medals. The protests, he told me, represented a gradual chipping away.

"You almost have to ask permission to walk up the street to the shop now."

The band had arrived! In several cars, having finished playing at the memorial march in nearby Castledawson. They were in white shirts and blue and white caps, the women in bright blue skirts. And here was Robert Overend, organizing everybody into line, in good-humoured fashion.

"Just give me a wee bit of room. Get the band out!"

But when they were all in line, and had moved off down the hill to the main part of town, past Dennis Murray and the big shaggy microphones of no less than three TV news programmes, their jolly smiles were replaced by blank and frozen stares.

Past the little Nationalist estates they marched, in absolute silence. The Concerned Residents, (under strict orders from above, it was rumoured) had issued a statement earlier saying that in the interests of cross-community harmony they were dropping their protest. So, commented my anonymous Unionist, in the eyes of the world's media, Sinn Fein were seen as thoroughly reasonable, and once again the Unionists would come across as cold and intransigent.

"They really are absolutely hopeless," he went on. "The world generally looks at the Unionists and thinks, you know, they say "No, no, no," to everything. They come across desperately badly, they really do. It's pathetic. While the Nationalists are so much cleverer, they'll tell the media exactly what they want to hear, meaning always, of course, the exact opposite."

The rumour of powerful forces in the background was certainly easy to credit. For the discipline was excellent. Not a word did those angry Nationalist faces utter. Not a word did those proud Unionists say, as they strode on by. Until the band struck up you could have heard a regimental pin drop.

It was one of the most tragically ridiculous things I'd ever seen in my life. Two communities, sharing the same tiny townland, behaving en masse like a couple who've just had a huge row and won't speak to each other. Unable to meet each others' eyes, yet determined they make their furious point.

And what were the paid representatives of the wider world doing about it? Rushing forward to say 'For God's sake snap out of it!' No. Waiting in hope that a spat would break out, that the righteous anger of both sides would flare up into something entertaining enough to make the headlines.

BANG! Everybody jumped. But only a little, for it was just the kid in the united Ireland T-shirt chucking a banger in the direction of a knot of RUC men. Well-disciplined too, they barely moved a muscle…

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