Pope John Paul II and the Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, looked down on the loyal sons and daughters of Ulster at Drumcree yesterday. Orangemen had hoisted pictures of the pair on to the steel barricade blocking their march.
The Pope had "666" inscribed across his forehead. "No surrender to Roman anti-Christ," the slogan said. A Glasgow Rangers scarf was wrapped around Mr McLaughlin's neck. "Mitchel and John Paul as you've never seen them before," joked an Orangeman.
Some 5,000 loyalists gathered outside the hilltop church. Hundreds of British soldiers and RUC men flooded the area. Rows of barbed wire ran across the fields. There were trenches and concrete barricades.
It was a strange scene, a battle zone amid the soft, rolling countryside. "What would the Impressionists have made of this?" quipped a photographer.
British soldiers with blackened faces crouched under trees. Military helicopters hovered overhead. "You would think they were facing the Serbs," complained one loyalist.
Posters conveyed Orange anger at the authorities, the Ulster Unionists and Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, of the Garvaghy Residents' Coalition. "Oppose your pervert priests, not our parades"; "Blessed is the [Orange] man that walketh not in the council of the ungodly [Breandan and the Parades Commission]".
A poster of a masked IRA gunman said: "Minister for Education." Painted across the main steel barricade was: "No government for Sinn Fein/IRA. We would rather stay here, Trimble."
A round of wolf-whistles greeted a young woman walking across the field in a mini-skirt, low-cut top and thigh-high boots. "You should be leading the parade, love. Breandan Mac Cionnaith would have no problem letting you down the Garvaghy Road," shouted a loyalist.
After the church service, six Orangemen marched to the main barricade where they spoke to a senior RUC officer. It was a dignified and solemn action.
A drunk thumping the barrier was reprimanded. "You're a disgrace to your religion. Imagine drinking on a Sunday morning. If you don't stop, I'll put your teeth down your throat," a marshal warned.
After the marshals left, a group of men poked a branch at the RUC through a gap in the barricade. "Get them where it hurts," one said, aiming at an officer's privates. Another loyalist shouted at British soldiers: "Go back to England where you belong. I hope the IRA blow you all up."
But generally the mood at Drumcree was relaxed and good-humoured. The tension of previous years was gone. Orange officials seemed confident their parade would soon be allowed down the Garvaghy Road.
As darkness fell, tents were erected in fields and a holiday camp atmosphere prevailed. Earlier, a woman in a Union Jack wig and dress danced along the trenches to entertain the crowd. "We have our very own Spice Girl," said an Orangeman.