The Maureen Effect, The Queen's Visit And Giving The French Something Else To Moan About

"I regard everything with irony, including the face I see in the mirror when I wake up in the morning."
- Sam Peckinpah

By Charley Brady

I suppose that this is the point where I'm supposed to take the contrary view and say how much I was appalled at the visit to Ireland last week of the Queen of Britain and Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands and whatever little bits and pieces they have left of an Empire Upon Which the Sun Will Never Set.

I'm not going to, though. You know why? Because I thought it was bloody great. Sorry to disappoint you.

Although that does remind me of the old joke that went around concerning Prince Charles years ago - taking a break from talking to plants - when he stood over his first son William's crib and said:

"I want you to have all the things that I didn't have when I was growing up. Like India."

Ah yes, the old ones are the best.

What a great week, though, eh? Everything went off without a hitch and we managed to show the world that we are not some miserable little backwater but a country that, despite our problems - hey, every country has them - can put on a dignified show and mean it. Mean every nuance, every carefully planned trip for that amazing little old lady and her equally extraordinary and laugh-a-minute Prince Consort.

And you could visibly see that as the tensions of the initial arrival began to lessen that everyone, and I mean damned near everyone, was getting into the spirit of a truly momentous event in Irish history.

The trips became more and more loosely arranged, time wise, and that must have been a damned relief to them.

It was nice to see them laughing and gradually coming to a point where they were taking an interest in everything. And laughing, don't forget that. Laughing. Beginning to feel at ease with their hosts and their surroundings.

I even began to feel the Maureen Effect. That's what I call it anyway.

Maureen Gavan is a friend of mine in Chicago and she phoned me up to ask if I was watching it, just as she was thousands of miles away. Well, I wasn't. I think I was washing my hair or re-arranging my sock drawer or something important; but her enthusiasm was so strong that I had a Maureen Moment and from then I was hooked.

(A word about Maureen: she's one of those very upbeat, very positive ladies who would normally make you want to run a mile away, strangle them or put a fist through a window pane. Yet she always cheers you up. She's even been known to knock my cynicism into the back of the net with one of her scattershot emails. She does Trojan work with her charity Betty's Love which deals with Alzheimer's and those families affected by it. By the way, if you are one of the many families affected it is well worth looking up on the Internet.)

Anyway:

Here were these two old duffers on a four-day visit that would have drained the energy from people fifty-five years younger and actually enjoying it.

Sure, you had the usual suspects like Sinn Fein, who threw all of their toys out of the pram and were the only major Irish party not to attend in any way. Oh, wait; they did release hundreds of black balloons under the watchful eye of Gerry Adams, who you could just see knew that he had made a real miss-step.

Being a guy who loves the limelight he must have been bloody bucking that he wasn't there, simpering and acknowledging our closest neighbours: our closest neighbours, for crying out loud.

The ones who gave jobs to builders and plenty of others when Ireland was in the toilet bowl; the ones who forgot our differences and happily accepted Irish who married into British families. You know, those neighbours.

Did Adams and his cronies moan about taking the Queen's shilling when they got out of jail and immediately signed on the Welfare? You can bet your republican ass they didn't.

Gerry Adams, suggesting that the visit was "premature" and asking the Queen to apologise for murders? HIM? Where does that guy, who loves walking the corridors of power in London, get off with that?

You think that I forget what Britain did to Ireland? Never; but I'll tell you this: my father was one of the strongest Republicans you could ever meet. Of course I can't talk for his shade but if he were alive he would have rejoiced in this week.

Queen Elizabeth came as close as is diplomatically possible in her speech on Thursday night to apologising, something that I never thought I would hear in my lifetime:

"With the benefit of historical hindsight we can see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all."

Or not at all.

Adams, you think that wasn't someone reaching out from the bloody soil of our combined histories?

Maybe you should go back to school and remember that.

When I was at school I was put upon on a couple of occasions by a guy who gave me a tough time. He was fourteen. I waited years to get back at him and do you know what happened when I did eventually get back at him? I felt awful. I was twenty years older. He was a different person. I was a different person. But I had that old Celtic "hold a grudge forever" nonsense in my heart.

Yeah, that might sound like a microcosm of things but sometimes that American psychobabble rubbish makes sense: Sometimes it is just absolutely necessary to "move on".

Before I leave Adams and Co. alone to dwell on the wrong step they took here I'll just mention the Scottish Television channel (STV) which held this astonishing visit out as a wonderful success story for Ireland, some Royal commentators even going so far as to suggest that it is one of the most enjoyable state trips that Elizabeth and Philip ever took, which is really pretty exceptional. From what I understand, the tens of millions who watched parts of it in other areas of the world were equally impressed. And Philip managed not to insult anyone. Somebody - probably the Queen - must have managed to drop some Prozac into his orange juice.

Leave it to the typically impartial British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) though: obviously annoyed at the thought of down in the dumps Ireland having a successful week they wheeled out Adams and gave him much more time than he deserved to expound on how, as he put it: "Many people I have spoken to, particularly from the North, have expressed a disappointment that she did not apologise in a more direct and clear way for British involvement in Irish affairs. I never expected that, I have to say."

Instead of making out that he was representative of Irish people everywhere maybe he should have talked to more people from the Republic. Certainly I came across very few who were unhappy with the visit. Indeed, the far majority were delighted and at the worst, some were indifferent. Even the usual die-hards had a sense of the inevitability of this visit eventually coming to pass.

If any one sentiment was expressed over and over, albeit in a humorous way, it was to hope that she wasn't going to spring a surprise and announce that she was returning the six counties to us with immediate effect. I think that would have led to mass cardiac arrests throughout the land. "Jeez, lads, did you hear that? She's lumbering us with the six bloody counties just as we're trying to get back on our feet. The last thing we want now is those mad Nordies down here with us!"

Yep, that would have added to the gaiety of the nation all right.

Adrian Kennedy, radio talk show host on FM104 here had on one of the few head bangers who burned union jacks in protest, showing their usual lack of intelligence.

Now Adrian isn't a man who suffers fools lightly so this young idiot - John was his moniker - was a Godsend to him.

As soon as he started his by-the-rote drivel I just settled back in happy contentment, knowing that Kennedy was just warming up to fillet him. "I did it because I hate her! I just hate her!" his guest yelled with the articulacy typical of this kind of donkey.

Kennedy mused that perhaps it was because of the unfortunate timing of the visit on such an anniversary. Yeah, John enthusiastically agreed. What anniversary is that? enquired Kennedy, a shark wearing a soft silk gown. Eh... the anniversary of the... eh, Garden of Remembrance... eh...

"It's of the Dublin- Monaghan bombings! You're an idiot", said Kennedy, just getting into the swing of things.

As poor old gobshite John floundered around in a pool of blood that was the aftermath of the shark attack, he managed to blurt out that he wanted the six counties back.

"You want the Queen to return the six counties to us, do you. Can you name them?"

Oh dear. You just knew what was coming. It was one of those things that you just had to listen to from behind the couch.

"Well, there's Armagh and... well, there's... wait a minute, no, off the top of my head I can't... Let me think..."

"You're a fool! You're burning the British flag because you want the six counties back and you can't even name them!"

That's my Adrian.

By the way, I think that now would be the right time for David Cameron to open up and finally release the files on that dreadful day's work, the Dublin- Monaghan bombings. It's long overdue and as we are on the verge of real co-operation now I think that would be right. However, that's another article.

I'll leave specifics of this wonderful visit for others to write about. I'm sure there won't be any shortage, but it was filled with little moments that I just thought were a pure delight to see. There's the Maureen Effect in action again!

I had one really bad moment when Bertie Ahern, forgotten but not gone, was referred to by a commentator as "the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern". It's not the first time that mistake has been made, but lads, get a grip.

Every time you do that I feel as if I've fallen headlong into Bobby Ewing's shower. I wonder if the last few years have been a dream and Fianna Fail are still in power.

(Mind you, Fine Gael is rapidly turning into a case of "Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.")

At least Enda Kenny looks suitably statesman-like. He scrubs up well and you're not embarrassed to have him on the world stage.

Never mind grasping Bertie, though: can you imagine if it had been Brian Cowen hosting this visit? He'd probably turn up half in the bag, with a pint in his hand and yell: "Come on, Lizzie, ya good thing ye! Give us a bit of an oul' song!"

Be thankful for small mercies; and also for President Mary McAleese who showed that in the easy manner she had with our visitors she will be hard to replace. Well, that's if you think that we need a president at all; again, another article.

A success: and I think that we collectively as a nation breathed a sigh of relief as her plane took off without as much as an egg having been thrown at her.

Just before I leave this, well don't you just live and learn. I heard this week of her love of travelling by helicopter and apparently she often quips that the chopper has changed her life as dramatically as another chopper changed the life of Anne Boleyn.

(Weirdly, I just looked up the date of her execution and it was May 17, the same date as the aforementioned bombing atrocity.)

Who would have thought that I would share a sense of humour with a queen; and before the lads in the Olde Brewery say anything, yeah, I know. I behave like a big queen at times. Sod off.

Now I can't possibly close this week without expressing my admiration for the New York law enforcers who dragged the IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sorry ass off the plane that he was about to do a Polanski in. It gets even better when you realise how angry the French are about him being paraded as if he was a common or garden variety criminal. Ah, bless. Just because he is a Very Powerful Man he should have been treated with kid gloves, should he?

As to all this conspiracy stuff, well, maybe he was set up and maybe he wasn't. The attempted rape is still "alleged". But if it was possible to "set him up" just because the supposed conspirators knew that you couldn't send in a pretty woman to clean his room without him turning into an animal, maybe this guy shouldn't have been on the streets in the first place. Just a thought.

Either way, our hats are off here to America for doing what would have been damned near impossible here. Can you imagine if this guy was leaving Shannon Airport?

"Jaysus, I'm not getting involved in this one. Call somebody else to take responsibility for arresting him. It's more than my job's worth."

We would then have held a tribunal on what should have been done while he swanned around Paris until he died of old age, while we struggled to make a decision on what SHOULD have been done. That's the difference between here and the States.

Hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net