Local colour

It's the Marching Season again (groan...).

From now to September, trying to get about the main thoroughfares in the West of Scotland at the weekends runs the risk of getting stuck behind the massed ranks of the flute-and-drum bands of the Orange Order as they parade through the streets. I ran into this one in Coatbridge this morning and had to sit for 20 minutes in my car listening to a discordant medley of The Sash, Derry's Wall's, Danny Boy and something that sounded curiously like a Van Morrison number.

There is something fundamentally ugly about flute bands - regardless of whether they're orange or green - and while I agree with the basic right to march, I just wish they'd do it somewhere I didn't have to see or hear them.