Drumcree.

Marches.

The Garvaghy Road.

Standoffs and police.

Unfortunately, you’re not watching an episode of Reeling In The Years with people throwing stones to a backdrop of The Cranberries.

It’s 2026, and it’s frankly depressing.

If an alien landed in Portadown this week (and God help any alien whose sat nav sends it to Portadown), I think it would ask a fair few questions.

It would see 35 men outside a church on a hill, and they would all be men, because the Orange Order doesn't take women.

The men, dressed in bowler hats and sashes, would be demanding to walk down a road where the people who live there really don't want them.

The alien would be told that this walk goes back to 1807, which sounds like a lovely bit of heritage.

Then someone would have to explain that it also goes back to the 1990s, when that same stretch of road came close to capsizing the whole peace process and gave the country several Julys we'd rather forget.

The alien might then hear that the men had agreed to walk in total silence with no bands.

It might reasonably ask why you'd want to do something so badly when it can only be tolerated in total silence.

The alien might take a quick look around at everyone standing in the rain, grimacing, and rightly decide to spend the weekend in Portugal.

To be fair to the Orangemen, they went through every legal channel going, and the Parades Commission and the Court of Appeal both said yes.

Then the residents sat down on the road, and the First Minister Michelle O'Neill, flanked by Mary Lou McDonald, joined them at a protest the police had warned was unlawful.

This made unionist politicians apoplectic. The word omnishambles springs to mind.

Part of me wishes the residents had tried something else.

In 1989 about two million people held hands in a line across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and the pictures went around the world.

Imagine the Garvaghy Road lined on both sides with residents - children and grandmothers - smiling and holding flowers, and the whole thing on CNN by lunchtime.

You'd have to be careful with the flowers, mind.

White lilies are out, because up there the Easter lily has its own associations.

So even a bunch of flowers in Portadown has a side.

It’s easy for me to say all this, of course, down here in our ivory tower in the Free State.

Glib, simplistic answers may not be the answer.

And for the young lads in moustaches down here with the Wolfe Tones playing ironically in the car and a balaclava for the Kneecap gig, who think a United Ireland is a quick referendum away, a spin up to Portadown might be educational.

There's a whole community up there who would have to be brought along, and this week’s events give you a fair idea of how far we have to go.

On a more positive note, it was only a short time ago that the annual Fleadh was a roaring success in Belfast, and the organisers showed how these things can be done by including all traditions in the celebration.

If the Orange Order could find a way to embed some of this inclusive spirit in its traditions, perhaps it would face less resistance?

FAI fraught and fractious

It was an equally fraught and fractious week for the poor old FAI, an organisation that might be mistaken for a paramilitary group having shot itself in the foot so many times.

After losing 1-0 to Kosovo on Thursday, the Irish squad spent four hours in a hotel meeting on Saturday while training and the press conference were put on hold, and then they voted to play Israel.

Of course, the whole country goes into spasms when they hear the words “Irish football team”, “hotel room”, and “four-hour meeting” in the same paragraph.

God knows, the PTSD from Saipan hasn't gone anywhere.

I felt for the players.

Gavin Bazunu decided he couldn't take part, saying he believed the killing of innocent people is wrong.

Whatever your view, it took some guts for a 24-year-old goalkeeper to put that in writing.

It also left the FAI naming Jimmy Dunne, a centre half, as the third goalkeeper, because the rules say you need three.

It was a move so typical of the FAI, that I believe it should be carried forward as some sort of weird tradition for future games.

The football, when it finally came, was nearly an afterthought.

Ireland were 3-0 up inside 25 minutes, with Jack Moylan getting a goal and an assist.

The players wore black armbands for all lives lost, and nobody shook hands.

So, no more edgy than Skibb v The Haven, says you.

And Ireland have to play them again with still no clarity over whether we will honour the next fixture.

At least they made their point on the pitch, for once, but the fact that this has landed squarely on the players tells you all you need to know about the leadership of the FAI.

Nice tipple earner

At least someone was having a good week.

The Fallon brothers, Eamonn and Brian, came away with almost €240 million in cash and shares from the sale of Distilled, the company behind Daft, DoneDeal and Adverts.

They started the site as a school project in 1997.

And people say that TY is a waste of time? 

The name, it turns out, was never a joke.

Daft stood for Dublin Area Flats and Tenancies.

Two young lads accidentally named the Irish property market in 1997 and then spent the next thirty years watching it live up to its daft title.

Whatever we do, let’s not tell the aliens about how the property market works.