Betty and Phil book their Irish getaway

Indifference was my initial gut reaction to news that the Queen would visit Ireland from 17-20 May this year.  That eventually mellowed into ambivalence.

Excited? To be sure, to be sure...

It’s not that I’m necessarily against the visit, in principle.

At least, not exactly. Apart from a diametric opposition to monarchism, hereditary peerage or any other kind of caste system, I don’t really see why any invited foreign head of a state shouldn’t visit the country.

Given the trouble Ireland has had over the centuries with its over-ambitious sibling nation, it’s probably a reflection of some kind of post-colonial political maturity if we can show the good grace to treat our former ‘overlords’ with the kind of hospitality for which the country used to be so rightly famous.

And in that spirit of maturity and hospitality, it’s also probably worth remembering that if the Great British Public are happy to call themselves the subjects of a Monarch; we, the free-born Citizens of a Republic, should respect their wishes and give their visiting Head of State all due respect.

Hostage to historical cliché

Naturally, this visit is a hostage to history; how could it ever be otherwise? It is a hundred years since the Queen’s Grandfather George V sailed into Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) at the head of a flotilla of gunboats, so for some, this year’s visit has a pleasing, almost geometrically fitting sense of occasion.

However, this being Anglo Irish relations, there is always a spectre at the feast. Another coinciding anniversary for this milestone visit is one that fits rather less comfortably with the agenda of choreographing a new era of detente.

The British head of state arrives in Ireland on 17 May , the anniversary of the Dublin Monaghan Bombings in 1974, which killed 33 people; the highest daily death toll of the entire Troubles. Allegations of British Intelligence involvement in the four no-warning car-bombs have never gone away...

But again, it’s also probably worth remembering that in a personal and immediate way, the Windsor family can empathise with the loss that blighted so many families during the Troubles. Louis Mountbatten was Philip’s uncle and he was, by all accounts, very close to the man assassinated by the IRA in August 1979. Logical consistency aside, on a simple human level, failure to acknowledge that fact would be a disrespect to all the Troubles’ victims.

One could almost pity poor Mrs Windsor’s diary secretary. Imagine the difficulty of working out a time to hold this visit that didn’t upset someone. Trying to find a date for the Queen’s Irish visit must have been a bit like opening the little windows of a grisly advent calendar to find a dead martyr or conflict-related outrage behind each one.

While there is some opposition being voiced to the visit from traditionalist and more internationalist quarters (and rightly so in a state which proclaims itself to be a functioning democracy), that bastion of the Irish cultural establishment, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), has shown itself adept at putting a good face on hosting a visit from the ‘Crown’. After all, the mythology of Croke Park -- Bloody Sunday 1920, the Hogan Stand and ‘Hill 16’ -- is pretty much inescapable.

Hill 16: appropriately enough, it sounds more like an objective on a military map than a humble stadium terrace. But then, Croker isn’t so much a sporting arena as a long succession of culture-defining moments. This place hasn’t just witnessed the bloody birth of the nation; with the rubble of Sackville Street at its heart, you might even proclaim (especially after a few pints) that it is the nation.

Queen’s visit upsides

So it’s fair to say they’ve come a long way in Jones’s Road since the days of shunning ‘Garrison Games’ and banning the ‘forces of the Crown’ from playing Gaelic games. These days, the GAA looks forward to the Queen’s visit as an opportunity to further open the games up to Ireland’s protestant and unionist community who, in times past, would not necessarily always have felt welcome.

But that’s still a tough crowd that Betty will be playing to and don’t forget, she’s got the Garden of Remembrance to get through and all. Paying dignified tribute to people that were shot and hanged as traitors to One's crown is all in a day’s work for this tough old lady.

You could hardly blame her though if she needed a drink and visited the Guinness Storehouse (because don’t forget, the Guinness marketing team will want a picture of Her Majesty supping on a Pint of Plain to appear in all the next day’s papers).

And of course Betty loves the gee-gees and she’s not short of a few bob (which is always likely to win her fans in poor auld Ireland) so who could blame her if she took the opportunity to visit the Irish National Stud in Kildare?

If life gives you lemons....

After all, Ireland probably needs all the tourist green it can raise, so if a nice old German lady and her Greek husband want to come over and watch a bit of hurling and Irish dancing while they stay in a Phoenix Park guest house, then let them off I say; especially if they go home and tell everyone what a lovely time they had...

I know it’s a bit mean-spirited but another upside of all this is that as the citizens of the capital come out to welcome 'Herself', it’ll be a nice excuse to remind them Dubs why us culchies call them Jackeens...

I’m also rather looking forward to seeing just how tacky the Queen’s Irish Visit memorabilia will get; a marriage of Royal kitsch and the Leprechaun aesthetic could really plumb new depths of tastelessness.

And because I always like a silly punt, I’m already looking for odds down the bookies on whether Prince Philip will say something to outrage or offend the colonials...