Watching your Ps and Qs in a right royal commotion

NEWTON'S OPTIC:A €4 MILLION Famine memorial project has run out of money. A royal visit to the Republic will incur €8 million in security costs. I think we can all see how to square these two circles. But first, an editorial note.

I am writing this in the UK, where we capitalise the word “queen”. However, I have no way of knowing if this will be lost in cross-Border translation. Sometimes Southern newspapers use a capital “Q” and sometimes they do not. Officially, the small “q” is used to avoid confusion with all the other queens in Irish public life. In practice, the mood of the subeditor is also clearly a factor. Suffice it to say that for us Brits an uncapitalised queen looks as strange as an uncapitalised god, or in your case, mary.

But I digress. The Famine memorial project is in the form of a restored workhouse in Tipperary, intended for use as a self-catering tourist hostel. Interestingly, the word Famine is capitalised in the Republic, along with Queen if referring to queen Victoria as the Famine Queen. We do not do this in the UK as we have to distinguish between the various famines caused by both Victoria and other queens.

There was the Indian famine of 1876, for example, which killed millions while queen Victoria heartlessly sampled curry in the Brighton Pavilion. Then there was the no-potato famine of the first queen Elizabeth’s reign, or at least that part of her reign before the potato was discovered.

But I digress again. The €8 million cost of a royal visit is primarily due to threats from dissident republicans and Islamic extremists. It might seem a little contrived of the government to mention Islamic extremists but in fact they are at least as numerous in Ireland as dissident republicans, as any headcount at an éirigí demonstration will attest.

Oddly, éirigí does not capitalise its own name either in the UK or the Republic, possibly for international marketing purposes.

Republican objections to this particular royal visit do seem somewhat ironically partitionist. After all, queen Elizabeth has already been to Ireland dozens of times. I had the honour of attending her most recent Irish engagement, when she opened the new A1/M1 roundabout outside Lisburn.

“I name this roundabout the Lisburn Southern Relief Roundabout,” she decreed while grown men wept tears of pure joy. “God bless it, and all who go South for relief around about it.”

But I digress yet again.

The point is that if the dissidents dropped their threat against the queen it would save half the cost of her visit, making €4 million available to finish work on the Famine hostel in Tipperary.

This would be a wonderful symbol of remembrance and reconciliation between our two peoples and so on and so forth.

Perhaps the queen could even open the hostel in person, blessing it and all who stay in it. Her majesty and the dissidents could then progress together into the self-catering accommodation to prepare an appropriate meal, such as potato bake with pasta salad or gratin dauphinois with braised leek and cabbage.

It would be a powerful gesture of peace between everyone on these islands – except the Islamic extremists.

We could all look South for relief around about it.