THE teenager with the crew cut hammered the steel nails into the makeshift wooden flagpole. On a night when both sides nailed their colours to the mast, he was doing it for real. But the colours weren't his.
About an hour before last night's nationalist march passed by, the 12 foot Tricolour was raised amid the red, white and blue bunting in the Protestant Fountain estate.
"That's a good size", someone remarked. For a few minutes it fluttered against the grey sky, and then he passed it to his friend on top of the 50 foot pile of pallets and tyres for last night's bonfire. "You gotta put petrol on it", the same man added.
"They burnt the Union Jack on the 15th", the flag maker argued in a matter of fact way. "They came up here to steal them and then they burnt them."
So where did the Tricolour come from? "This was just made from bits of cloth."
In a nearby street Ian Hetherington polished his windows alongside the painted pavement. "It's just like Coronation Street around here", he said cheerfully. He moved to the area from the mainly Protestant Waterside area recently. It had been the family home for 30 years. "The Fountain has held its own for the last 30 years. We're a very close community."
Further up the street Liselle Holmes said she was looking forward to today's march. Her one year old son has just learned to walk and today he will watch the march with her. Asked about last night's nationalist march, she said she didn't see the point. "They got what they wanted."
Cameramen swamped the two bronze figures at Craigavon Bridge as the nationalist marchers from the Gobnascale Estate approached. Crews looking for "arty" shots could not resist the figures, each standing on separate stone walls. They reach towards each other and their hands are left almost touching, but still separate.
After the Gobnascale marchers passed, in silent single file, the sound of pipes and drums came from The Fountain. The William King Memorial Band was on the move. It was a "spontaneous (Apprentice Boys) eve march", some residents said. Others said it was a "show of defiance against what had just passed by".
Two RUC Land Rovers blocked the bottom of Wapping Street, where both sides could have met. The band stamped down, playing as if their lives depended on it, the noise bouncing loudly off the narrow walls. Then they stopped for a few minutes about 20 feet from the front of the Land Rovers.
"Right up, go on", the leader urged. So they struck up the music and marched near enough to brush the Land Rovers with their drums before heading back up the hill.
Over in Guildhall Street the Gobnascale marchers had been outnumbered by journalists as they waited for four other groups to arrive. "What are you doing here?" one man asked a woman. "Are ya here for the riots?"
The men, women and children listened to Donncha Mac Niallais, of the Bogside Residents' Group, and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness. At one point a man dressed in a Union Jack shirt and a rubber mask waved a Tricolour from the walls. "We'll never surrender to the f...ing loyalists", he shouted. Some of the crowd booed. Some cheered.
He turned to go and shook his Tricolour at cameramen who ran towards him, blocking their lenses and telling them to f... off". Down below, the money clunked into plastic buckets as collectors went around the crowd.
Stewards from the Bogside Residents' Group said they were pleased with the response. "We've told them to just turn around and go home. That's what we'd like the unionists to do. Just turn around and go home."
