Recently, I spent a sunny Saturday afternoon at a church fête up on the gently sloping fields of Drumcree, Portadown. I was taken there by Iris, my Protestant mother-in-law-in-waiting, whom some readers will remember from a previous column as the woman from the North who has an unnatural fondness for cheap bleach.
There was an auction in a garage and a cake stall in a white tent where beautiful blooms and ancient books shared space on trestle tables heaving with bargains. Outside, women sat on benches enjoying the live country music. I couldn't resist phoning a friend to tell him where I was. Is it a fête worse than death, he not unreasonably wanted to know.
For the record - and there was plenty of gospel vinyl for sale on the bric-a-brac stall - it was actually a grand day out that reminded me of the sales of work that used to be held in the Presbyterian church hall next to my childhood home in Sandymount, Dublin. Even though the lovely Mrs Smith, a stalwart member of the local ladies' club, who lived next door on the other side, produced magnificent apple tarts, there was an unspoken assumption that Protestants baked the best cakes. Take the classic Butterfly Cake, for example, where the top of a fairy cake is sliced off, cut in two and then stuck back onto the cream covered confection like a pair of crumbly wings; a little piece of heaven in a fairy cake case.
Only they don't call them cakes up in Drumcree. They call them buns. Or pastries. Or, in some cases, traybakes. Reverend Pickering - a charming man who in the South we only hear about during the marching season, when he is being interviewed about the protests on the hill outside his church - was on stage reminding those in attendance that there were teas all day in the tent. So that's where we went. It would have been rude not to.
Queuing up in the tea tent, I counted at least 231 varieties of pastries/buns/traybakes laid out like buttery jewels on the table. There was everything from your common-or-garden iced bun to your 15 bun, so called because this dentist's nightmare contains exactly 15 ingredients including biscuit, coconut, mini-marshmallows and glace cherries. Yum.
Top Hats, I learned, were chocolate-covered marshmallows with a smartie hat on top. The unfortunately-named Sticky Jimmys, it was explained to me, are a sweeter version of your average Rice Crispie cake, made with toffee instead of chocolate. There were mini-lemon meringue pies, crisp chunks of shortbread and baby éclairs. They all cost 20p each. And, yes, we had more than one.
Later, strolling around the life-sized Dr Who exhibition, complete with tardis and daleks - don't ask, I didn't - Iris explained to me that it wasn't only local Protestants who came to the annual fête. To illustrate that this really was a mixed event, she steered me towards Willie Nugent - "Willie's a Catholic," she said proudly - who was standing beside a sign which read "The Motionless Farmer". Some years ago, Willie got into the Guinness Book of Records for standing motionless for 13 hours in a shop window in London. These days, he travels around the country, sitting totally still on a tractor festooned with cuddly toys, for hours at a time. Co Armagh's own David Blaine is a regular at the Drumcree fête, where one year he lay in a bath of ice. Reverend Pickering was actually quite worried about him that year, but Willie survived and went on to push a pea along the road with his nose for two miles.
A few days later, I rang Reverend Pickering to thank him for an enjoyable afternoon. He confirmed Iris's claim that over the past 15 years of the fête, Catholics have supported the event, which raises money for Drumcree Church. I happened to phone him the day after Mary Holland's funeral in Dublin, which had been a deeply moving celebration of her life and work. Something Nell McCafferty said during the service had stuck with me. She told the story of how as far back as the 1960s, Mary was writing about both sides, holding up a mirror to the troubled communities, somehow being able to tell them more than even they knew about who they were. She was a great teacher, Nell said.
Reverend Pickering remembered meeting Mary during one particularly bad July. She sat quietly in a pew at the back of his church. People were milling around but she was relaxed, he said, and didn't look at all uncomfortable to be there. They had a pleasant conversation and she went on to write a perfectly-pitched piece for The Observer which laid out the case for both communities.
Reverend Pickering said he was hoping for a calm July. A prayerful July. But whatever happens next month, it would be great if, like Mary Holland always did, we could try harder to see both sides. That would be even sweeter than a Sticky Jimmy and so much better for our health.