Michael Harding: I had a dream about the Prince of Wales...he drew me into his bed chamber

Queen Victoria was born on a fine May morning long, long ago. And yet her shadow stretches across the centuries and I feel sorry for the new king. His fingers are fat and his age makes him vulnerable to the righteousness of youth, and he was left waiting too long at the door of the Abbey.

He appeared petulant in the golden carriage and he reminded me of my own father when he got grumpy on our grand tour of Connemara in 1966. I was in the back seat of the Austin A40 and I remember my mother looking ruefully out the window as she said: “My goodness! Isn’t the fuchsia just beautiful?”

The house where my mother spent some childhood summers had a back garden overrun with the blood red flowers. She was probably nostalgic for the Victorian flavour of her own youth, with its shadowy drawingrooms, upright pianos, mahogany dining tables and lace curtains.

I think it’s fair to say that the small towns of Ireland aspired to nothing higher than such faded Victorian grandeur in the early decades of the 20th century.

My camera notices details I miss. I’ve never had this experience with my iPhone

---

Michael Harding: To me, Bundoran streets were once as glamorous as those of Las Vegas

---

Michael Harding: Did I ever tell you the story of the two cats?

---

Michael Harding: I’m ashamed to say that I love my Toyota; it’s my pride and joy

---

Even I enjoyed wandering around the avenues of Lord Farnham’s estate when I was a boy, touching the glossy leaves of the rhododendron, a plant I associated with Queen Victoria.

And I shared my mother’s fondness for fuchsia, which I admired on the ditches of Donegal when I was a student in the Gaeltacht.

“You spoke well at the party,” says I, referring to the few words he delivered about his granny being in heaven. “You should do more of that.”

My teachers called the fuchsia by its Irish name: “Deora Dé.” The tears of God. For me even the Irish name had a tinge of Victorian melancholy, conjuring up in my romantic imagination the blood-splattered cross whereon the pallid body of Christ hung suspended between heaven and hell. The flecks of crimson petals were to me a beautifully poetic expression of an ontological conundrum – the sorrow of God.

Such esoteric themes mirrored my own melancholy. As a teenager I loved the poems of William Blake and films about Dracula.

I mentioned this to a friend recently as we walked near the coast in Donegal. I also mentioned my dream. After the coronation I had a dream about the Prince of Wales, his sparkling teeth smiling at me like an honours botany student.

“You spoke well at the party,” says I, referring to the few words he delivered about his granny being in heaven. “You should do more of that.”

[ Michael Harding: I was waiting for new tyres when God Save the King rinsed Charles’s eardrums. I felt his pain ]

Suddenly he drew me into his bed chamber where there was an Irish writer stretched on the eiderdown and pillows, reeking of whiskey.

“What are you doing in the Prince of Wales’s bed?” I wondered.

“I am one of the king’s men,” he declared. “What the f**k are you doing here?”

And he scowled at me so ferociously that I fled out the door and down the avenue to nowhere. The king himself was now calling after me from the window.

“Get out, scoundrel!” he bellowed. “You don’t belong here!”

It was all just a dream and my friend suggested that I had internalised the coronation and was using it as a symbolic language to articulate the pain of my own low self-esteem; my sense of worthlessness that rarely reaches consciousness, but surfaces regularly in dreams.

“They are making love,” I suggested; not that I know anything about the mating habits of the snail but I couldn’t think of another way to describe what was before my eyes

As we walked across the sand dunes it was impossible to ignore the snails at our feet. My friend actually stood on one and I could hear it’s shell cracking like a boiled egg at a breakfast table.

“Mind where you’re walking,” I said, for there were dozens of them all around us.

“Where did they come from?” my friend wondered, slightly horrified.

“They are making love,” I suggested; not that I know anything about the mating habits of the snail but I couldn’t think of another way to describe what was before my eyes.

Each snail had stretched out from its shell, and its antennae were distended, as it reached for any scent in the air. Several had already found company and were touching other snails, entwining tentacles and performing various contortions that are beyond my capabilities to describe.

My friend, who is from Cavan, put it more succinctly.

“I think they’re looking for the ride,” says he.

To which I made no reply. Although I wished the king had been with us; he might have known the species, category and mating habits of the snail. They say he has an eye for detail. And facts were not insignificant in the Victorian age, of which the new king may be the last and final pale reflection.