Will covid-19 put the dampers on the Twelfth?

How could they not, what with Union flags and bunting gradually taking over the country just now?

It’s a bit like the Christmas celebrations which seem to start earlier and earlier by the year.

Okay, the loyalists don’t start in August or anywhere near to it as people do for Christmas.

But the country has been turning orange since about the 12th of June.

That’s a month earlier than we’d expect.

I have some bunting in the house and a couple of Union flags but I can’t actually find them.

I’m less than three years in this house and I’m still looking for ‘lost’ items.

The move to here was fast and dramatic, an event I don’t want to remember at all.

But my Orange decorations will probably jump out at me someday soon.

But, will I put them up?

Yes, if they turn up, but not until the eleventh night which was always the case when I was growing up in rural south Derry.

In fact, it was a big night in the local Orange Hall as the women made the sandwiches for the next day’s big event and the men put up the banner and the flags.

All that is history, of course.

The Twelfth decorations have been unfurling for weeks and I was wondering the other day was this the reason why the ‘other side’, or the ‘green brigade’ as Prods are apt to call them, have been active in creating what I will call ‘distractions’, such as the renaming of one of our leading universities after a ‘republican martyr’ or the row at Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council, where the Sinn Fein mayor has blocked a proposal to name a new centre after the centenary of NI.

You see, it could be argued that these aren’t anything to do with orangeism or the Twelfth, rather they are meant to aggravate and, perhaps, distract loyalists from enjoying the run up to their big day.

In fact, there’s some talk there will be attempts to ‘rename’ over a dozen streets in Belfast after ‘republican martyrs’ though Belfast City Council says it is responsible for naming streets.

While the university involved in the gate incident described it as ‘an act of vandalism’ which was removed as soon as it became aware of it.

Mind you, it’s been a difficult few months and it’s not hard to see how the Covid-19 crisis which had us locked down for weeks, with still a way to go before we get our freedom back, could have given certain people extra time to be creative about annoying one side while the other side, with no work to go to one suspects and no big Twelfth day to look forward to, deciding to cheer themselves up and bring the decorations out a bit earlier.

Northern Ireland has now followed the UK government in introducing the one metre reduction but at Stormont, all sorts of cat fighting is going on.

Sinn Fein ministers are already showing their lack of experience at the job and those who want someone to blame seem to pick on the Health Minister Robin Swann, a role few others wanted, whose patience must be wearing thin.

Tempers are short and I haven’t even taken into account the desperation of families struggling to work and teach their children at home.

And what about those children? Confused, restless, worried and desperate for normality again.

Children and the elderly are society’s vulnerable groups yet they’ve been treated poorly in a society which has proven to follow the maxim that it’s every man for himself.

The Twelfth has been cancelled for this year and it will be missed. We will also miss the revenue it brings in from tourists who come to see it. That won’t stop the Protestants from enjoying the day anyway even if it’s only in their back garden, a metre or maybe still two from family and friends.

My one consolation is my pot of orange lillies blooming nicely thank-you.