Outside four or five bright lights illuminate the overhead sign: "Here we stand... we can do no other."

The Hillside Cafe is in full swing, as it has been most nights for coming up on 10 years.

Apart from Saturdays — "well, we like to give Arlene a bit of a break," Davey quips — the makeshift eatery is open every night of the week.

Sunday is ice-cream night, Wednesday it's chips and then, on usually the best-attended night, come the huge bacon and fried bread-filled baskets. " Well, it is fry-day," George jokes.

The most obvious fact is that these people are here to stay.

Yet while those who turn up regularly come to enjoy an evening of craic and friendship, their whole desire is to see the cafe closed down.

For the very day after Portadown Loyal Orange Lodge Number One ever gets to complete its homeward walk from Sunday service at Drumcree Church of Ireland to the Order's HQ in Carleton Street, via the contentious Garvaghy Road, the hut will be dismantled.

Tonight there are 11 people altogether, eight men and three women, including Arlene, in the hut. The numbers rarely rise above 15 or 20.

As new fry supplies are handed round, the chat falls and rises. Someone says they have spotted fresh Tricolours going up along the lower half of the Garvaghy Road, less than half a mile away. Across the other side of town, men are erected Union flags on almost every lampost along the Brownstown Road and Rectory estate.

"There's a split among the people of Garvaghy, you know," George argues. "The people at the top of the road are not the same way as those at the bottom."

Spirits in the hut are high because many of those arriving have just come from the re-opening of Seagoe Orange hall refurbished at an estimated cost of £15,000. Less than a year ago, it joined the long list of other Orange halls damaged in arson attacks. Everyone agrees Seagoe, where a church parade still takes place the same day as Drumcree, has never looked better.

This Saturday night another hall dedication, at Derrycarne, takes place and building work is nearing completion at Derrykeevan. While the numbers in the hut are relatively few, some say there has been a bit of a recruitment surge in local lodges lately.

But still no word of a walk down Garvaghy. Yet every Sunday in life lodge members parade after morning worship down to police lines where they usually hand in a letter of protest.

This year, however, there has been less word than ever. While district leaders this week met new DUP leader Peter Robinson and deputy leader Nigel Dodds for inconclusive talks, outside Portadown the Drumcree 'issue' has long faded from the radar screen.

"I have come to wonder if we will ever get down," one veteran attendee admits. "I do think also that apart from Portadown there are even not many Orangemen who really care much about it."

The tea comes out, hot and milky. There's a bit of a dispute over claims that somebody walked out "the whole cut" to Seagoe earlier in the evening for the band parade. "Has he never heard of taxis?" John wants to know.

The walls are festooned with photographs and items of memorabilia, including press cuttings dating back to the mid-1980s when Obins Street rather than Garvaghy was the flashpoint area in the town and the late George Seawright was making headlines for the wrong reasons.

On the back wall is a mocked-up photograph of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, resplendent in their Orange sashes out on the march with the brethren. "Jeepers, these days you wouldn't rule it out," somebody says.

"We'd have to change the rules a bit, mind," district master Daryl Hewitt, just landed in from the Seagoe celebrations, remarks.

He likes to get out to the hut twice a week or so, but doesn't always make it. "I would think many people, even in the Orange Order, would not know this place is here.

"But it is a vigil, it is a witness."

Some of the others say that, while they have not heard much media talk about the Drumcree dispute, they have no doubt that Hewitt is working hard behind the scenes.

Literally following in the footsteps of past luminaries like the late Harold Gracey, whose photo also dons the hut, the district master has to be careful to manage expectations.

At monthly district meetings he has a reputation for playing it straight.

But Hewitt has little doubt that, eventually, a solution will be found.

As the clock turns towards 11, the talk turns to the state of the country. Petrol prices, food prices, house prices and so on. Suddenly a 12-year stand-off over a Sunday afternoon parade takes on a different context. And I head home.