A:I know I should be sorry but the truth is I’m glad.
B: Glad about what?
A: Glad that no unionist leader has sent his/her congratulations to Mary Lou McDonald on having been made Sinn Féin president-elect.
B: Why are you glad about such a negative thing?
A: Because for one it’ll show how far unionist thinking has moved since the late 1960s, and for two, the people in the south are going to see what we in the north have had to endure for so long.
B: What’s all this talk I hear about shoes? Is Mary Lou planning to model herself on Imelda Marcos?
A: I don’t think so. She was speaking metaphorically.
B: Ah.
A: One commentator has compared her to Sean Lemass, who succeeded De Valera.
B: A height thing, then. Dev being very tall and –
A: No, height is not an issue. The comparison was based on the long time that both Dev and Adams served as party leaders, and the fact that Lemass was a dynamic practical figure who taught the twenty-six counties to embrace the twentieth century.
B: What was unionist reaction to Lemass?
A: Ian Paisley threw snowballs at him.
B: I thought Captain Terence O’Neill invited him to tea.
A: He did. But it all ended in tears.
B: Is that what’s going to happen with Mary Lou?
A: Hard to say. But I heard my good chum David McNarry on the radio this morning, saying that when Mary Lou talked about putting her foot in her own shoes and not those of Gerry Adams, she put her foot in it.
A: What does that mean?
B: Nobody knows.
A: Does that include David McNarry?
B: Probably.
A: But won’t Mary Lou be the very thing unionists have been waiting for – a clean skin, with no baggage.
B: Ah, but has she condemned past IRA violence? Has she disowned Gerry Adams and all his works and pomps?
A: Unlikely, I’d say. She’s a republican. Republicans tend to see the decades of armed conflict as courageous resistance, and Gerry Adams as one of the great Irish leaders.
B: The unionists are going to love her if she starts that kind of talk.
A: I doubt if she’ll start it. But she’ll not duck it either. Mary Lou is no mean debater.
B: Probably her low centre of gravity.
A: What did you say?
B: She’s got a low centre of gravity – like Lionel Messie. Weaving her way around opponents and leaving them floundering.
A: That’s not a bad comparison.
B: Thank you.
A: Will the fact that she’s a woman and a clean skin mean unionism will embrace her?
B: Not if David McNarry is representative of unioniam.
A: And is he?
B: Not sure. I switched off and may have missed the many unionist callers besieging the BBC switchboard this morning, to offer their warm wishes to Ms McDonald on her elevation.
A: Leaving aside unionism, is this glad confident morning for republicanism?
B: How beautifully you put it it could well be….Sudden thought: the leader of the DUP is a woman, the leader of Sinn Féin in the north is a woman, the President of Sinn Féin is a woman, the Prime Minister of Britain is a woman, the First Minister in Scotland is a woman.. Does that mean politics in Ireland and surrounding islands will be debated in a softer, more human tone from now on?
A: Mmm. Ask me an easier one.
B: Is David McNarry an Orangeman and has he ridden the goat?
A: Yes to both.
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