The Queen will be a tough act to follow

She made it look easy. It was far from easy. In Ireland, republican and all as we are, we referred to her casually as ‘the Queen’. A wise, tough and mischievous soul. She enjoyed her ‘audience’ with the royals of Cork on her visit to the English Market and saw the humour in the O Connells naming a fearsome open-mouthed fish ‘the mother-in-law’. She is a tough act to follow and King Charles the 3rd is very different than his mother. That is the way in every family and it is often the surreptitious preference of mothers. No British monarch reigned for so long. No heir to the their throne has waited so long. I reckon Charles will hold his own at the English Market in due course. Camilla will be very sought after in Brown Thomas and the Crawford Gallery.

Monarchy. ‘The Firm’ is part of the British brand. It sells a lot of souvenirs and tea-towels. But really and truly, there is no rational or sensible place for monarchy in the digitised ultra-democratised panoptical social media prison we all live in now.

Michael Deasy, Bandon, Co Cork