Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

The Queen's trip around the world for sport has nearly given me a heart attack.

Whoever the eegit was who decided that a trip to an open air ruin in one of the most wind swept sites in Ireland should take place on the fourth morning of a gruelling trip that would kill an ox I do not know.

The frightening sight of her husband, hatless and without a scarf, listening to a doubtless fascinating diatribe on Romanesque arches was one of the most unusual spectacles I have ever seen on TV.
Much more of this and we'll be accused of trying to kill the royal couple with kindness...

The Political is Personal?

The queen's visit has caused an outbreak of transference and counter-transference which would make Freud chuckle, I think. He had a good sense of humour, as his hilarious book "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" goes to prove and his cracking open of human motivation is always worth a look.

One person stopped on the street yesterday by the police worked in the context that her grandfather fought with the IRA almost a hundred years ago and that up to that very moment,when being stopped and scrutinised, she had roamed wild and free though the streets of Dublin, unhindered by any force.

She has my sympathy. I have a similar problem when getting through airports but I do not call on the sins of the fathers as a link to the inconvenience of having my underwear examined as if it contained all the fowl and characters from that jolly ditty "The First Day of Christmas". If you go where security forces are, you are fair game I think, which is the reason that I stayed home yesterday and wondered, vaguely, if it might be safe even to go shopping.

The paranoia that world leaders bring in their wake is entertaining, but a bloody nuisance too.

When Prince Charles came to Dublin, I forgot about all the problems it might cause and got stuck in a car park that had cars parked illegally ending up late for an appointment. Bad planning on my part, not a reminder that my grandfathers had a political viewpoint that had led to such a nuisance.

The mockery that the parking attendants poured on me that day was simply a reminder of the coarse nature of city life back to the dawning of time. It also ensured that I did not go back to that carpark for years.

And, just in passing, one of my grandfathers was in the Somme during the Easter Rising in Dublin. He survived and lived to a ripe old age, giving instructions daily as only an Irishman can, regardless of their political hue...