The saint comes marching in

Never, I say never, did the old saw that every cloud has a silver lining ring more true. True, true, through and through. Sure, the foot and mouth epidemic is pretty well as dark as a cloud can be. And yet, it brings its own small mercies. Believe me.

Many marches have been cancelled in Northern Ireland. They include what might have been a very contentious encounter on the Lower Ormeau Road in Belfast. More will follow. Centuries of tradition abandoned like a boyfriend with bad breath.

It reminds me of a comment made to me about Northern Ireland by a German friend. I tried to explain the problems and the where-we’re-at-now situation before describing the patient-next-steps-towards-normality. He was having none of it.

“What they need there,” he barked “is a sizeable population, I’d say about one-third, to be from the Maghreb.” That’s Arabs, from North Africa. The presence of such a strong non-Caucasian proportion would, he felt sure, give the locals to understand that they had a lot more in common than apart. The incomers would also be Islamic, though to what degree the bigots of Northern Ireland (both sides) could be described as Christian is a moot point.

Yeah, and there’s also the probability that the locals would react by asking whether they were Catholic or Protestant Muslims!

But there’s a truth in the joke. We expect opponents to unite in the face of a common enemy, but in Northern Ireland they might not. However, as with foot and mouth disease, the enemy might do a bit of the work on their behalf. Small among mercies, perhaps, but a mercy nonetheless.

Now, none of the above was prompted by the quite different foot and mouth problem apparently contracted by Sophie Rhys Jones (the Countess of Wessex, no less) who was stung by a News Of The World hack, posing as an Arab sheikh.

The bould Soph gave out her opinions on various members of the royal family and the British establishment. I didn’t read ‘em, but I followed the fallout. Clearly, foot-in-mouth is contagious among the hooray Henries at or near the top of the UK aristocratic feeding chain. And their levels of savvy are low.

The real winner is the British republican movement whose cause has advanced by a decade. This is not some gun-totin’ rebel alliance. It’s actually a democratic movement, well supported on the left and gathering friends in the centre.

What that project might mean to Stormont is anyone’s guess. I mean, a couple of weeks ago there was a parliamentary debate about the propriety or otherwise of displaying Easter lilies in Stormont.

Well, there’s nothing like a sense of decorum, or having your priorities right. But if Britain’s increasingly confident anti-monarchist tendency gets its way, there may be some other republican symbols around Carson’s hallowed halls.

Actually, the loyalties of many in Northern Ireland are to Britain, not the royals. And modern British republicanism has clear antecedents, like Cromwell’s Roundheads and the Levellers. So I guess they’d go with the flow. But for the Little Englanders up there it would be different.

Well, we’ll see.

Meanwhile, and not a million miles away from there, did you see those incredible reports of smuggled meat into the UK? In trying to find out how the present epidemic came to the UK, investigators have been uncovering the most godawful and unbelievable food-import stories.

It’s just amazing. Monkey meat, anteaters, antelopes and dozens of breeds of you-name-its are brought to the UK from Asia and Africa. In some cases whole animals arrive, in containers, in baggage, even in suitcases. Most of it gets through. Occasionally a spot check picks it up. Or handling staff notice blood dripping out of bags. It’s true!!

The meat is widely and openly sold in the UK. There are shops with signs that tell you that ‘bush meat’ is on sale. That’ll be monkeys and so on. Clearly, there’s also a market. The current estimate is many thousands of tonnes come through Heathrow every year, mostly unspotted. And this is before we even mention exotic pets!

There’s a huge risk to Europe in this. It is already believed that this is the source of the foot and mouth outbreak (it is said that the strain of the virus has been traced back to Asia). But, potentially even more catastrophically, they may be carrying some strange disease that has so far not emerged from the rainforests, but is ready to do so at the first opportunity. That’s what happened with AIDS, right? And Ebola, and others.

Of course, I’ve no doubt that there’ll be those in Ireland, in all quarters, who would see this as God’s wrath visited on an unholy and depraved world. The same people who would be against Easter lilies in Stormont would, in many cases also believe in the literal truth of the Bible. It is as it says. Just like the Taliban is against statues.

Whether they would place their fates in the mercy (or is it succour?) of a long-dead mystic is another matter. The Protestants wouldn’t, I guess, but the Catholics would. I mean, they’re out there right now meeting and greeting the bones of St. Therese of Lisieux. Certainly, only the Catholics would believe that such relics might help the believers to avoid an outbreak of, well, Ebola or foot and mouth disease.

It’s got to be one of the year’s more bizarre escapades of the year. The long-late saint’s bones, in a casket, being brought from church to church around the country. To spark a spiritual revival, apparently.

It smacks of idolatry. I mean… you tell me, is it pagan? Or just primitive?

You’d have to feel a certain sympathy for the poor woman. How undignified. How 1950s. Like a show-band revival tour. A 75-date itinerary. And public resources supporting it as well, like police motor cycle escorts. Incredible. It’s also like some of the strange religious outbreaks in 19th century Ireland, of which the moving statues phenomenon some years ago was a pale and distant shadow.

And no talk yet of foot and mouth curtailing its progress.

Some gigs have all the luck…