Loyalty over royalty? Harry must choose between his duties here and the match... Get that prince a pint!
COME tomorrow afternoon Prince Harry, on his first ever trip to this country, will face a bit of a dilemma. If he is to stick to the busy schedule planned for himself and Meghan, he simply won’t make it home in time to watch the England v Croatia semi-final. On the other hand, if he’s to cancel one of their engagements so as to leave early, what will they skip?
The visit to President Michael D Higgins in Áras an Uachtaráin? The Book of Kells in Trinity College’s magnificent Old Library? They really can’t cancel their viewing of the achingly sad and eerie Famine memorial on the quays, since it’s seen as a crucial gesture of acknowledgement of a disaster (largely man-made as opposed to natural, some would even say a genocide) which is still little known to our nearest neighbours.
The tour of the Irish Emigration Museum is significant for similar reasons, and it’d be a real shame if they had to miss out on Croke Park, and its own trove of historical lore. And to disappoint the young tech whizz kids in Dogpatch Labs, who are dying to showcase their startups and their coding workshops to the royals and their global media entourage, would be downright cruel.
So what’s a footie-loving prince to do? Put duty before pleasure, and miss out on a little bit of his own country’s sporting history? Or cut short his first-ever trip to Dublin, one designed to soothe fraught relations as the Brexit car crash thunders our way, to watch a football match? By George, I think I’ve got it…
Harry needs to get himself a bit of sunburn and, while he’s in Croker, pick up a Galway hurling jersey. A sunburnt, redhaired chap in a maroon jersey? He could walk into any pub in any county (except maybe Kilkenny, just at the moment) without drawing a second glance.
Then he needs to find a busy pub with a couple of big screens, get someone to stand him a pint (it may be best if he didn’t open his mouth, he probably doesn’t sound like your average Galway hurling fan…) and belly up to the bar. And there, completely incognito and in the space of 90 minutes or so, he’ll learn more about the current state of AngloIrish relations than any amount of official visits and formal tours could teach.
It won’t be the relationship of the history books, nor of the sanitised unction, deference and protocol that necessarily colours all royal interactions with common folk. And it won’t be the relationship of political ‘frenemies’ who had only recently consigned tensions to history and now find themselves negotiating a challenging new landscape of divided loyalties and unhappy differences.
Instead, it’d be the real, human, complex, tangled, conflicted but entirely unique relationship that exists between neighbours everywhere, but between these neighbours in particular. He’ll hear some people shouting for Croatia as if all belonging to them were born and bred in Zagreb. He’ll hear groans whenever England score, and cheers for every yellow card or goal or dirty tackle they suffer.
But yet he’ll also see something that would be unimaginable in his own country. He’ll see English fans among them, or Irish folk cheering on the neighbours, without the slightest hint of rancour or ill will between the rival groups. He’ll hear English accents and good-natured teasing and Irish tones with the giveaway Liverpool and Manchester inflections of long-time emigrants.
Arguments
He’ll hear half-time arguments between devoted fans of English soccer clubs, or updates on the latest Love Island happenings. He’ll see a couple of Manchester United jerseys being proudly sported by Dubliners embracing their newly discovered Croatian roots. He’ll also hear, if he sticks around, informed discussions on the latest Brexit developments to a level that’d be hard to top amongst his own divided and entrenched citizens.
And, belying the sporting schadenfreude and the Brexit frustrations, he’ll feel more at home than he might have imagined: not because he could pass for an Irishman, nor because he seems like an easy-going sort of chap who’d fit in with any Irish crowd, but because like all long-time neighbours we’re living proof of Flann O’Brien’s Atomic Theory, as illustrated by The Third Policeman’s bicycle: After rattling along for so many years together, over rough terrain and smooth, we’ve absorbed one another’s molecules so that, sometimes, it’s hard to tell where they end and we begin.
We watch their TV shows, support their football clubs, shop in their stores, work in their cities. You can fly to London or Liverpool cheaper and quicker than you’d bus it to Donegal, and most of us have friends or family who have made their homes across the water. If not, we have fathers or grandfathers who went there to work in the lean years of the Fifties and Sixties, or aunts and grandaunts who married there and stayed. We might not cheer on England the football team – especially when you see hooligan fans trashing an Ikea store, as they did on Saturday, to celebrate beating Sweden – but England the people, the decent, patient, polite, warm-hearted folk who seem to like us and welcome us and find us endlessly, amiably baffling, they’re a different matter.
We don’t really get their extraordinary deference to the royal family, and the concept of public figures about whom no murmur of criticism or cynicism is ever brooked: there’s no comparable institution in Irish life. But we appreciate its sincerity, and certainly admire its benefits. You’ve only got to look at the crowds swirling around Buckingham Palace or queuing for its gift shops to see the value of the world’s most distinctive and recognisable brand. Some Brits grumble about maintaining the royal family but their cost, to each citizen, is just 70p a year – the return, in terms of global recognition, tourism, and national identity, is immeasurable. My little niece, who lives in London, met Prince Harry recently on a school trip to the Tate Gallery, and he happily hunkered down for a group selfie. The royals, I reckon, are a bit like a mobile Eiffel Tower: instantly recognisable national monuments, fantastic photo opportunities, except the difference is they come to you.
And, today, they’re coming to us. The British cabinet is in crisis over Theresa May’s latest Brexit plans. The future has never been more uncertain and yet the visit of the royals is a reminder of those elements of our shared past that transcend the current political turmoil.
Their visit to the Famine Memorial will have a resonance and a solemnity to match the Queen’s bow to the Garden of Remembrance. In Croke Park they’ll hear about another Bloody Sunday, the Emigration Museum will recall the tide of refugees from poverty who found refuge on their shores, and the 8th-century Book of Kells, illuminated in a unique blend of Celtic and Saxon styles, recalls an entirely different era in our joint history.
And, aside from all the royal couple represent, they’re also Meghan and Harry, global celebs still trailing the glitter and stardust of the wedding that glued us all to our TVs two months ago. We might have watched with the intention of scoffing at the Brits and their peerless pomp, but instead we melted when Harry gave Meghan THAT look, as she floated up the aisle in a chiaroscuro halo, and mouthed ‘I’m s **** ing it!’ when she joined him at the altar. And, as an added extra, they’ve both got Irish roots, but then you’ve only got to look at Harry to see that.
Which is why he’d look such a natural with a bit of a sunburn and a GAA jersey. So when the formal business is done, tomorrow, how about we find him a proper Irish pub, give him a bag of Tayto and a nice creamy pint, set him on a high stool in front of a TV, and make a modern moment for next year’s history books?