If you are one of those who regards Orange processions as something to be avoided at all costs, making for airports or ferry ports to get away from it all, you don't know what you're missing. They always tell you more about the political mood than any Stormont debate, and nowadays they demonstrate even more clearly why it's impossible to pigeon-hole the pro-unionist culture.

If you can't define it, how can anyone deal with it? Obviously the way Ian Paisley has - by capitalising on the credibility he has acquired, over years of saying "no", laying down the law to both Gerry Adams and Tony Blair, and then tearing up his pledges not to deal with Sinn Fein or Dublin.

I was anxious to detect if there were any signs of dissent on the march - even murmurings of discontent about the new DUP policy - but there were none that I saw. Someone in a band walked all the way to Malone House and back in a Paisley mask, and everyone saw it as a joke, nothing more.

In fact, the most striking thing about the Belfast parade, as I saw it, was that most of the Protestant boys seem to have taken the urging of the Order and the tourism officials to heart, and decided to experiment with an 'Orangefest' rather than a sober-suited, here-we-stand show of strength. There was far more fun, in other words, than defiance.

I ask you, could anything be more ludicrous than a full band - and lodge members - dressed up in leopard-skin outfits, like cavemen, and topped with long straggly wigs? Not only that, but they were weaving from one side of the road to the other in a manner that 10 or 20 years ago would have had them expelled from the Order. Only a Jewish word describes their dash and daring: chutzpah.

Otherwise, the main themes this year seemed to be silly hats and dyed shaven heads. The fabric mills of China must have been working flat out to make all the red, white and blue furry caps, more familiar on clowns, harlequins or pied pipers. I thought I'd seen the lot when a band came marching past, all in dunces' hats (or maybe they were Harry Potter wizards).

The drums were beating just as loudly as ever, of course, but I've never seen so many well-turned-out military bands, in all their finery. From a distance some looked so orderly, until you saw that entire bands had their peaked caps worn back to front, like tennis players.

The float idea, with touching reproductions of 19th century life, is one that should be developed, as part of Orangefest. Orangemen and women obviously love to dress up, as mill workers or Ulster-Scots peasants, and a kilted one was proud to demonstrate to the crowd what he was wearing (quite respectable) underneath.

As I say, the Twelfth that I saw was mostly great entertainment for eyes and ears, with none of the darker elements creeping in. If you wanted to find them, in the banners or slogans, they might have been there, but the only fears I had were for the teenage drinkers following the noisiest bands and the suffering masses on their longest walk of the year.

Spotting a Falls Road Methodist Church banner, I was prompted to think what west Belfast nationalists would make of it all - and how their predominantly green processions differ. The unionist show is such a mix of cultures - Scottish, English, American, Top Twenty and even a bit of Irish, as in Star of the County Down - that it is impossible to typecast. It's free-floating, with Bible- thumping, monarchy-worshipping, fast-dwindling temperance lodges rubbing shoulders with the more secular breed, downing their drinks in Union Jack outfits.

No doubt there would be a bolder display of distinctively Irish culture, in music and dress, in a nationalist parade. They know where their identity lies, whereas unionists are far more mixed up and divided in their loyalties. Their capital isn't London, Dublin or even Belfast; their attachments are to much smaller communities.

Getting the two to communicate with each other, across the peace lines, will always be a problem, but maybe we're making a start. People seem to be taking their cue from their politicians, and are not only more relaxed about the future but are beginning to see old enemies in a different light. Long live the differences in culture - fascinating for any tourist - and the growing number who can tolerate and even enjoy them.

After all these years, the BBC nationally still has problems telling one part of Ireland from another. Trying to think of inoffensive subjects for new murals, one presenter could only come up with George Best and the Nolan sisters (born in Dublin and Blackpool).

Speaking of Best and the City Airport, a World War II vintage Wren, who was on duty at the Fleet Air Arm base there, HMS Gadwall, was telling me about their high-tech weather forecasting methods. If an incoming pilot wanted an up-date, she would leave the prefab hut and see if she could see Holywood church spire. If she couldn't, it was no go.