This religion stuff...

I don't do religion. Haven't done since I was about 13. Before that I went to Sunday school because I was made to. I also went to mass with my pal Rosina because she wanted company. But soon after I started secondary I decided enough was enough. My decision may have had to do with a home economics teacher who was given my class to teach RE to. She obviously hated it - and us cocky wee sods from the 'top' class who did Latin instead of HE - and her way of making her feelings known was to force us to learn verses from the Bible off by heart, with the threat of the belt if we didn't do it. I got quite adept after that at dogging RE.

But it seems, whatever we do and despite the fact that fewer and fewer people now claim to have any interest in religion, there's no getting away from religion in Scotland.

A friend of mine, much loved and respected by me over many years, recently told me that Whole Foods was 'full of Jews.' I'd no idea what she meant. I don't look at my fellow shoppers and wonder what their religious affiliation is. I notice the customer - always a man - who has clearly never been through a checkout before in his life, doesn't know you have to have a bag or buy one there and never has his card ready to pay with. I said mildly: Well, this is an area where quite a few Jewish people live, so they're bound to be in the shops. That's not what she meant. She claimed Whole Foods is a company owned by Jews and providing jobs for Jews. I started looking at the staff in Whole Foods after that. They don't seem particularly Jewish but how can anyone tell? There is one American, seconded from the USA. The rest of the staff seem to be local.

Then I decided: I don't care. It's not my business. I don't go to Whole Foods for religion. I go to for lovely cheese, French toasts, the best avocados in the world, organic carrots and potatoes for my soup and superb free range eggs from Stewarton. Their coffee is pretty good too. And I'm pleased they are providing jobs locally.

Today, I'm reading in the Sunday Herald that 'loyalists' - presumably Protestants with long memories and a grudge - have taken exception to celebrations of the 1916 Easter Rising being held in Scotland by people of Irish descent. It seems there may be 'trouble' in the east end of Glasgow and other 'loyalist strongholds' in the Central Belt. I don't know how many people there are of Irish descent in Scotland. Quite a lot, I would think. They are surely entitled to celebrate any damn thing they like - and anyway the Easter Rising isn't about religion but about the population of a country seeking independence from another country. And Scottish people were involved on the Irish side in the rising of 1916.

I once attended an EU conference in Northern Ireland. The theme was European cooperation. We spent most of a week setting up educational projects that would bring together young people and teachers from Spain, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Eire, Poland, France, Denmark and Sweden. It was a 'high-value event' (as we said in the jargon) with lots of spin-off benefits for schools. The final night dinner reflected the importance of the conference: it was attended by Martin McGuinness and by councillors from the local area. When Martin McGuinness got up to speak, several councillors - one of them a Church of Ireland minister - got up and left. They stood in the corridor till McGuinness had finished. After dinner, we had a display of music and dance from local school kids. They were wonderful, as they always are - amazing how kids always rise to a special occasion. When the Irish dancing started (one of the boys went on to join a travelling show of Riverdance, that's how good they were), the councillors left again. Now I don't mind people insulting politicians. it comes with the territory. But see when you do it to the weans...and with their proud parents looking on...it's time to - as we say in Glasgow - take a shine to yourself and work out what is really important.

Is there any chance we in Scotland could grow up a bit? Start cultivating an attitude that says: this is not my business - I don't care - just you get on with whatever it is you want to do?

Maybe then we could have a really mature country. I don't hold out much hope for a multi-cultural, tolerant society ready to welcome people newly arrived from Syria and Afghanistan if we can't even be tolerant towards people who have lived together for hundreds of years.