A right royal hoo-ha

Well, that's quite enough earnest introspection. And now for something completely different.

No sooner was a new statue of the late Queen and Prince Philip unveiled at Antrim Castle in County Antrim than it was widely ridiculed, a common opinion being that the female figure looked nothing like the Queen, and that Prince Philip didn't look much like Prince Philip.

One critic even suggested that the late monarch looked more like Mrs Doubtfire. And Philip looks more like a movie villain about to roast some useless underling.

Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council commissioned the local artist Anto Brennan to create the sculpture and claimed to be delighted, saying it captured the Queen "in a dignified pose, reflecting her grace, steadfastness and life-long devotion to public service."

But Vera McWilliam, an Antrim and Newtownabbey councillor, thought the critics had a point. "We have to be honest, it does not resemble the queen in any shape or form."

Other statues that have been roundly derided tend to be discreetly removed. I await with interest whether this statue meets the same fate.

Another statue of Philip dressed as a don, erected in Cambridge at an estimated cost of £150,000, was also derided and removed. Presumably a similar sum was spent on the controversial statue of the two Royals.

Anto Brennan hasn't made any public comment on his statue as yet.

Pic: The contentious statue

But is it true?

Okay, that's quite enough extroversion/ introversion/ shyness/ awkwardness etc. So now for something completely different.

There has been much talk recently about films and TV series that are seen by many as authentic document-aries although they are heavily fictionalised and may bear little relation to the truth.

The TV series The Crown was widely criticised as a travesty that totally misrepresents the Royal Family. The actor Judi Dench accused the show of being "crude sensationalism" while former Prime Minister Sir John Major criticised his depiction in the programme and said that a scene involving conversations about the Queen abdicating was "a barrel-load of malicious nonsense".

Now Julia Stonehouse, daughter of the late Labour Minister John Stonehouse, who unsuccessfully faked his own death, supposedly to start a new life with his mistress in Australia, has criticised the new TV drama Stonehouse as full of lies and mixing fact with plenty of fiction.

John Preston, who produced the series, defends it by saying it's based on a true story but some scenes and characters have been imagined for dramatic purposes.

The problem is that viewers won't know what's true and what's invented, and they may very well believe the inventions rather than the reality. Julia Stonehouse says her family has been plagued for almost 50 years by false press reports, books, TV programmes and now podcasts. Trying to correct all the nonsense is an uphill task.

Personally I think programmes purporting to be a genuine documentary should either explain  from the start that none of it is necessarily the truth, or it should set out to be the unalloyed truth throughout.

Mixing truth with undeclared fabrication for entertainment purposes is surely reckless and irresponsible and I don't understand why such stuff is permitted.

Pic: Julia Stonehouse

Battered paragons

People from other countries must be fascinated by the way the Sussexes (aka Harry and Meghan) are puncturing the Royal Family's carefully crafted glossy public image by trotting out one unpleasant jibe after another.

For years the Royal Family's operating principle has been to keep quiet about anything unsavoury and only talk about what preserves their innocuous and inoffensive public front.

Now Meghan and Harry are dishing the dirt big-time and making all sorts of scurrilous claims about other members of the Royal Family, and it's not a pretty sight.

I'm not saying anything about their accusations, as I have no idea whether all the stuff they're coming out with is true, exaggerated, embellished or simply made-up. All I know is that they accuse the Royals of racism, bullying, lying, gaslighting, planting negative stories, and treating Meghan like a usurper. And no doubt there are more claims to come.

Certainly the whole saga casts a very unedifying light on the Royals and how they operate behind the scenes. They may seem to be paragons of decency and civilised values but that's now up for debate.

The many admirers of the Royals must be pretty gobsmacked by the ongoing public furore. It seems that in the main they're either defending the Royals against what they see as an unjustified and narcissistic attack on them by a slightly unhinged couple, or they're defending Meghan and Harry against what looks like the Royal Family's undeclared mission to ostracise and discredit them as embarrassing mavericks.

The shine has definitely gone off the Royal Family's reputation, and even the benign charisma of the late Queen is looking a bit questionable.

Pic: Her Majesty is not amused

In your dreams

Dreams are very mysterious. In general they have no obvious meaning or advice for us, yet we get dozens of them every night. What for? Why don't we just sleep soundly with no dreams whatever?

My dreams are mostly anxiety dreams. I'm lost somewhere and trying to find my way home. Or someone sinister is chasing me through an empty building. Or I'm at a dinner party and have no idea who the other people are or what to say to them.

All my dreams tell me is that I'm an anxious person, which I know only too well. Why remind me of the self-evident? Why don't I have dreams telling me how to banish anxiety? Or even dreams that say my brain is right now deleting all my anxieties?

Psychologists have puzzled over the meaning of dreams for centuries and no doubt will keep doing so, and will keep drawing a blank. Many therapists are convinced dreams have plenty of meaning if you just interpret them in the right way, but I haven't found that myself. However I interpret my dreams, whatever I imagine they're telling me in some coded form, I usually end up none the wiser.

I hardly ever dream of people I know. If I did they might suggest something interesting about that person - that they're creepy or crazy or cranky. Even people I worked with for many years, even family members, even famous public figures, never appear. One supposedly common dream is to be meeting the Queen, but I must disappoint Her Majesty on that score.

Another apparently common dream is to find yourself naked in a public place, but I have to say that wherever I happen to be, I'm always fully clothed. Clearly whatever mechanism controls my dreams, it believes in public decency.

But I'm still waiting for a dream where I'm bursting with self-confidence and optimism, and anxiety is a thing of the past.