By DIANE PHILLIPS
It’s been said that Royal families think all new countries smell of fresh paint and asphalt.
I can’t vouch for the Royal sense of smell, of course, but I can vouch for a whole lot of asphalt going around. And it smells pretty good to me. The question is, what about everything that needed to be fixed before and the critical things that aren’t for show that need to be fixed now and will still need to be fixed after the king is safely tucked back into bed in the palace where the lights probably don’t go out every day and the nearest hospital doesn’t run out of blood and the local schools don’t have to close because there is no water for the toilets.
I don’t mean to be unkind. I fully understand this is a very hard country to manage. We’ve got islands so remote that if you measured the space in between you could probably fit in a few small countries or at least the state of Rhode Island. Twice. The universal service obligation (yes, that’s the real name for it) drains resources. We are always short of the funds necessary to fix everything that needs to be fixed.
But when Royalty announces they will be gracing us with their presence, we perk up, pick up, corral every piece of heavy equipment, grab every tool and ton of sand, tar and asphalt we can find. Miracles happen. We find the funds to fix the roads, not all the roads, mind you, but the ones the king and company will travel on. We smooth them out like steam-pressed velvet because, of course, we would not want King Charles to go home and whisper in Queen Camilla’s ear late at night when no one is listening and say things like “When I was in Nassau, the roads were so bumpy I bounced so hard I nearly burped. Smart, you’re skipping that wee part of the trip.”
I don’t mean to be disrespectful. I doubt the king ever burps.
But really, paving the road where his entourage will travel while the rest of us go on traveling roughshod on streets pitted with potholes so deep you could lose an axle and never find it again, roads rife with indigestible, burp-inducing bounces? This is not the first time we dressed up for Royalty. I still see the cut-off point, the unmarked demarcation point from sweet as silk to normal macadam on Eastern Road where Queen Elizabeth II’s entourage turned south on Fox Hill Road near St. Anne’s Cemetery. I think that was the 1985 visit. Nice paving job. It held.
The thing is I believe the Palace would be much happier if we showed them the real thing and did not splurge just for show.
Maybe it sounds crazy, but why don’t we take the King, who seems to be a very person who cares about how people live, to PMH and show him the real conditions and drop a hint that we could use a hand. Maybe he will be quite chuffed, as the British say, to see that we are not 100 percent where we should be without a hand from the British.
I’m not suggesting that we give up our sovereignty or independence. Lord no, just that if we can find the money and the resources, the equipment and the manpower, the desire and the wherewithal to do this for a gentleman we are never likely to see in person again, why can’t we do it for all the people we see all the time who need us to fix the roads and power and schools and hospitals? Why for them and not for us?
I get it. We all spruce up when company’s coming or a holiday approaches. Christmas coming and the room that needed paint for the last year suddenly gets painted, the guest bedroom gets spiffed up, the living room takes on new charm with a touch of this or that or we decide the broken oven is never going to fix itself even if we wait another year or so and it’s time to stop pretending cooking in the microwave is actually cooking. But how far do we go to prepare for a three-day visit when we struggle just to keep the power on, especially in Eleuthera, on a regular day? If we can find the moneyfor the, can we not find it for us?
When the Royals visited America for three days in April, you didn’t see America drop everything it was doing to smooth out every square inch the King’s vehicle would drive on, possibly because the roads were already smooth enough. But here we go – 15 hours a day of paving works on Celery Drive, Mackey Street, JFK, Cowpen Road, the airside ramp at LPIA, East Bay Street, Cumberland Street and Church Street, closing down who knows what and slowing traffic just about anywhere you go unless you go back and forth on Prince Charles Drive, Robinson Road and hang out by Clifton Pier which could be a nice getaway. What happens if it rains and there are delays so 15 hours of repairing and paving on all those roads every day isn’t enough? Will they close the road entirely for the next two days to make up for lost time? Then we might as well pitch a tent near Commonwealth Brewery. There’s a lot of empty land around there.
Not that the US got the Royal visit exactly right, and I am not suggesting that we imitate what they did for sure. It was the first State visit to America by the monarch in nearly 20 years since Queen Elizabeth II visited in 2007. Americans, being American, seemed caught somewhere between yawning and wondering whether the King and his youngest son, Prince Harry, would reconnect. While the King was dining, Americans were pondering the big question – would he or would he not see Harry perhaps for the last time while he was so close by in California, only 3,000 miles away from Washington, D.C.? Would there be a hug, tears, a reconciliation the tabloids would live on for the next millennium?
There was also the matter of a bit of a rift between the US and the UK that pundits debated whether or not there would be time and place and sentiment to mend, but after all the visit was marked by great jubilation when Trump announced that he was so warmed by the King’s visit that he would remove the tariff he had imposed on Scotch whisky and bourbon, much to the relief of a lot of people in the state of Kentucky.
I will say one thing for how The Bahamas will handle the Royal visit. Our protocol officers are top notch. They understand positioning, seriously, unlike whoever arranged the photo of Trump and the Royals in front of a large, framed picture of the president with his fist raised and blood on his ear following the assassination attempt during a rally in Pennsylvania.
The Bahamas will welcome the King, as we should. We will roll out the red carpet. As well we should. We will handle the pomp and circumstance flawlessly. As we do. Planned highlights including youth and an environmental landmark are ideal and should leave a lasting impression of what matters so much to Bahamians we want to show it off to the most prominent visitor we will entertain this year and maybe for a few years to come. But we just can’t help but marvel at how resources and energy suddenly erupt from the bowels of the earth to fill the holes and find the lights and shine up The Bahamas the way we wish it were every day, even if it is just for those of us who call it home.
Still, a few smoother roads will be a treat. Now, if we knew the exact route, we could plan around travelling surfaces smooth as pressed velvet and avoid that pothole that could have passed for a shortcut to Australia.