One should approach complaints on TripAdvisor with caution. There is a class of recreational whinger who travels the world with the express purpose of locating frayed fabric on bathmats or being kept awake by distant trams in beautiful East European capitals.
That website does, however, sometimes confirm uncomfortable truths about certain destinations. It is July. That means Wimbledon, the Open Championship and the Galway Film Fleadh. It is also the month when red-faced men in bowler hats stomp their way furiously to Northern fields for warm lemonade and mid-level sectarianism.
Despite feeble efforts to turn the marching season into a more austere, less culturally diverse Mardi Gras, there is little sense that tourists have flocked to the sound of the Lambeg drum. Nonetheless, travellers must still come to Northern Ireland.
Last week, following the "Twelfth" festivities, the Belfast Telegraph noted at least one fearful comment on TripAdvisor concerning the Days Inn in central Belfast.
“Sitting up for bonfire did nothing to improve stay or view from room,” the visitor noted.
“Noise from visitors there continued late into the night and on first couple of days, smell of smoke did not help.”
Another observed “drunks, verbal abuse, guys with Union flags,” and explained that he or she was “looking forward to leaving Belfast”.
We remove our hats to the management at the Days Inn. Most proprietors ignore comments on such consumer-generated sites, but the general manager took the effort to reply at some length.
"During the July period the cultural festival of Orangefest occurs the bonfires are erected for part of the festivities," he wrote.
What was it Hermann Göring never actually said? “When I hear the word ‘culture’, that’s when I reach for my revolver.”
It’s a revolting sentiment and the last thing we need in Northern Ireland is any more revolvers, but there are some contexts in which that word does instil automatic nausea.
The perfectly reasonable response from Days Inn inadvertently calls up a stubborn defence for the worst excesses of unionism (and republicanism, to be fair). Human sacrifice was once part of the culture in Celtic and Central American societies. They got over it.
It is worth referencing those memories of the Celtic Wicker Man. In recent years, some Orange revellers have taken to burning effigies along with the pallets and apple crates. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have suffered frequent immolation by inanimate proxy.
This year a version of Adams was hanged prior to fiery consumption on the outskirts of Antrim town, but the virtual sacrifice that kicked up the most noise occurred in Moygashel, Co Tyrone. A crudely modelled representation of Michelle Gildernew, former Sinn Féin MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, was telling sign. “Sinn Féin Scum, hands off our culture. Public hanging 10.30pm,” it read.
There’s that word again. In this context, “culture” seems to be defined as an atavistic force that compels adherents to behave in a less civilised fashion than the ruminants of the field.
“Culture” is mentioned when the Orange lodges insist upon marching through largely nationalist areas. It is an irresistible ancient energy, pressing modern men (almost all men) to make life unpleasant for their neighbours.
When arts administrators fill in applications for grants or write high-minded manifestoes they tend to argue that culture has worth because it brings people together. Most of the time, this thesis remains sound. As you read this, the Galway International Arts Festival is, for instance, reaching out warmly to visitors and to citizens of that busy city.
The culture of the Orangeman is, however, defined as much by opposition to another community as it is by a desire to cohere that culture’s own adherents. Just look at the sign on the Moygashel bonfire. The words reference the circumstances in which they are presented. The medium (a bonfire of effigies) is also the message (a plea for the protection of “our culture”).
There are further divisions worth noting. The average citizen of the Republic, as ignorant of Northern “culture” as most of his neighbours, could be forgiven for thinking that the Twelfth of July is celebrated by a significant majority of Protestants.
As we have noted before in this column, the golfing dentists of South Belfast tend to flee the province when July sails into view.
Quite a few shops and restaurants – in a manner that is positively French – actually close down for the duration. Tumbleweed bounces past three-storey houses named for flowering shrubs or villages in Hertfordshire. No beer is drunk in the space between the Edwardian gazebo and the well-tended hedge.
The Orangemen walk through a land that is only partly their own. No wonder they look so bleeding angry.