In the North, Protestants are up in arms over a Sunday rugby match. Donald Clarke recalls an era when the Sabbath was strictly observed
'As the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again," Churchill famously remarked in the aftermath of the first World War. Sky Sports must have felt a little of the great man's ennui last week when, after announcing the schedule for the live games in next year's European Rugby Cup, it witnessed a metaphorical rending of garments and flaying of temples by some Northern Irish officials.
"The recent news that the Ulster v Leicester Heineken Cup fixture is to be played on a Sunday has caused a huge amount of personal upset and distress amongst people within Ulster Rugby," wrote Michael Reid, chief executive of the game's ruling body in the North.
Some Southern readers may be surprised to learn that there is still a strain of Ulster Protestantism that seeks to promote a literal interpretation of the fourth commandment. Can the rest of the Bible be treated with the same reverence in that part of the island? Is the beast that has neither fins nor scales, but still moves through the sea, treated as an abomination? Is the man with a crushed stone allowed to enter the house of God? Who knows? But it is still possible to find clerics who think that he who goeth unto B&Q on the Sabbath, even if it be only to carry forth drill bits, is walking alongside the Necromancer.
Things used to be much worse, of course. The much-told story about Unionist councils chaining up the swings in the playground sounds like an urban myth, but it did actually happen. Until surprisingly recently, such bodies made it their business on Sundays to banish the Mardi Gras-like euphoria which normally flowed through the streets of Craigavon and Lisburn. The jazz clubs of Portadown and the absinthe bars of Ballymoney fell silent once a week while their patrons stayed at home to watch Songs of Praise.
Even in middle-class south Belfast, where I grew up, the fierce Northern work ethic was sheathed on the Lord's Day. In the Malone Road area during the 1970s, it was still viewed as spectacularly bad form to start the lawnmower on a Sunday and such infractions of scripture would cause tutting and eye-rolling.
Thirty years earlier, even tutting was felt to be too extravagant an activity for that day of the week. My mother remembers her Presbyterian grandmother - a fearsomely gloomy woman whose appearance used to cause the tiny me to sob hysterically - as an enthusiastic knitter. Yet on Sunday the needles were set aside and even the polishing of shoes was banned in this Armagh farmhouse.
But, despite the teeth-gnashing in the citadels of Ulster Rugby, the solemn Northern Sunday, with its smudged shoes, untidy lawns and unknitted socks, is disappearing. The 1997 Sunday Trading Act (Northern Ireland) brought the North's trading laws broadly into line with those of England and Wales and, from then on, my people were able to buy carbolic soap and Embassy Regal all week long.
Ian Paisley and his fellow zealots were, of course, delighted, as it gave them a chance to stand outside Homebase each week after church and bellow themselves into apoplexy. And they haven't quite given up the battle yet. A recent dispute over the opening hours of a Portadown swimming pool demonstrated the capacity of Northern Irish politics to defy satire. Newton Emerson, editor of the priceless satirical website, Portadown News, and regular Irish Times columnist, tells me how an agreement was reached to open the baths after lunch on Sunday. It was, however, then discovered that the Catholic Sabbath "ended at lunchtime" and the compromise was deemed to be unfair. The protesters returned.
Emerson felt he had to immerse himself to show solidarity with his fellow bathers. "So, we were all in the pool," he says. "My girlfriend and I got our picture on the front of the paper, half-naked, which was embarrassing. I was being conciliatory and agreeing there was a right to protest when the guy behind me shouted out: 'If the Reverend Willy McCrea can stand on a platform with [murdered loyalist paramilitary] Billy Wright then I can go for a swim on a Sunday.' When they hear those remarks, they know they've lost."
Emerson believes that what eventually frustrated the forces of Puritanism was something quite banal: the desire to shop.
"Oh yes. They stood up to every force in the modern world and they were defeated by supermarkets. The desire to have a little run round Tesco on Sunday obliterated 400 years of religious extremism."