The Twelfth

Some colour for a change.  Not often you see that on this place, as you well know.  See I have a few rolls of Provia slide film in the door of the fridge and loaded one into the FM3a a couple of months ago for The Lad's graduation.  Try as I might, I can't make the FM3a wrongly expose a shot, when on auto.  I have to remember to put it on manual from time to time, to keep that side of the thing working.  It's full auto and full manual, y'see - one of, if not the last of the manual Nikons before auto-everything took over.  From the feel of it, you can tell that 30+ years of Nikon know-how went into it.  It was a bit of a luxury, I'll admit, and every so often I think I'll trade it for something medium-formatty, but then I take it out for a walk and it's just so nice in the hand.

Anyway, I digress.  So at the graduation I did a few formal ones, which were just OK and then I asked Blondie aka Clare-with-the-shoes to give the boy a peck on the cheek, and she duly obliged, bless her:

The young ones, in full regalia, outside The Lanyon Building of The Queen's University of Belfast, to give it its proper title.

So after all that I had a film to finish quick in order to get back to some good old B&W.  As it was early July, that meant one thing - The Twelfth.  Now if you're reading this and wondering what I'm on about then clearly you are not from The Liberties.  The Twelfth of July is a Very Big Day in Ulster, when thousands upon thousands of menfolk, wimmenfolk and weans celebrate their Protestant History.  There's a whole story about that which we'll get to in a day or two and one or two twists and turns along the way which surprised me, I must admit.  Anyway, on the morning of the Twelfth off I went with the Provia-loaded camera to catch a bit of it.  We ended up in Limavady - you know, that place where the dog leapt over the river and all that O'Cahan history wot you learnt about earlier - assuming you were paying attention, that is.

Now this guy has the Orangeman look down pat - dark suit, white gloves, bowler hat, orange sash and cuffs and a fearsome determined look about him:

Behind him are the standard-bearers and musicians from his district - from the banner it would appear this group are from Burntollet, just outside Londonderry-Derry.   Red, white and blue are favourite colours on the twelfth (as well as orange), since they represent the Union of the United Kingdom, to which all good true Ulster Protestants subscribe.  Or so they would tell us.  It wasn't always like that though, as we shall see.

More to come tomorrow...