Ruth Dudley Edwards: I yearn for the days when we kept politics and sexuality out of the wardrobe
I was on the Irish radio station Newstalk’s morning programme to discuss a bizarre news item involving the Irish Office of Public Works.
New tour guides were being told at the Battle of the Boyne visitor centre in Meath that they were banned from wearing either green or orange clothing.
This, surmised reporter Darragh McDonagh, “was aimed at respecting the sensitivities of both unionist and national visitors”.
I don't know much about the Irish Office of Public Works, which manages the Irish government’s property portfolio and various heritage sites, but its bureaucrats have a reputation for producing excellent work but being excessively perfectionist.
They provoked a scandal which caused both outrage and hilarity last year when it emerged that in response to a request from the Irish parliament for a bike shed, they spent €335,000 on providing a covered shelter with room for parking just 32 bikes.
On their Boyne website they have a hazard warning of deep water in the nearby canal and river and uneven terrain in the park land which requires suitable footwear.
In the same spirit, tour guides are warned that “nudity is prohibited at all sites”.
I fulminated over their clothing colour restrictions, not least because I have recently been enraged by the washing instructions on a new pair of otherwise excellent trousers I ordered from Sweden.
“Be Kind,” I was told.
Well, I don’t take kindly to being hectored by my trousers.
Encouragingly, Shane Coleman, the interviewer, and I were in perfect harmony about busybodies and agreed that when it came to clothes we should wear whatever colour we want while bearing in mind the duty of good manners.
I told the Newstalk listeners that I’d been asked a while back to speak as an outsider at a TUV conference and wore my best suit, which happened to be Kerry green.
Since they knew I was a friend, not a foe, no one seem to take offence.
However, I do try to be fair.
The Irish Office of Public Works have also banned their guides from sporting clothes featuring “slogans, badges or emblems”.
I can see what they're worried about. They don’t want an outbreak of tribal warfare if Boyne visitors decide to sport Celtic, Rangers or Gaza-related T-shirts.
I'm one of the many who are fed up with Pride Day becoming Pride Month and being harassed by LGBTQ etc. etc. activists, whose ranks include intimidating, predatory men whose idea of their rights includes denying women single-sex spaces.
I feel nostalgic for a world in which it was OK to show your sporting allegiance, but you kept your politics and your sexuality out of your wardrobe.
Ruth Dudley Edwards is the author of The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions and 'Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice’.
Ruth’s website is www.ruthdudleyedwards.com, Twitter is @RuthDE, Facebook is Ruth Dudley Edwards