What is a suitable 80th birthday gift for a woman who really does have everything? Elizabeth II, Queen of England (and quite a few other places) will reach that milestone on April 21st and the question is exercising the minds of her courtiers, writes Michael Parsons
In the good (ahem, sorry that should have read "bad") old days, a British monarch could have expected to receive some pretty amazing presents to mark special occasions.
"Would Ma'am care to become Empress of India?" Queen Victoria was once asked by Disraeli. Would she what? And so before you could say Regina et Imperatrix she had become the great white mother figure for the teeming brown-skinned millions.
No such present is available for Mr Blair to present on this occasion.
In fact, this queen's reign has been marked by the irritating habit of a succession of prime ministers coming to take things away - from Ghana to Hong Kong.
"Would Ma'am care for a new issue of stamps from the Royal Mail? New coins struck in one's own image? A service of thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey?" Yawn! Really, it's all old hat. She's been there, done that, worn the insignia. So some of her minions have come up with something a bit different. A cantata, no less. That's posh-speak for a poem set to music.
And there's certainly no shortage, you would think, of great poetry to choose from: Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Kipling to name but a few authors. Give credit where it's due: - the British sure do know how to knock out a good verse.
But no, instead they asked the Poet Laureate, a chap called Andrew Motion (annual salary for this little number £5,000 and a butt of sack - that's an archaic term for 150 bottles of sherry) to write a few lines to mark the occasion.
Now Mr Motion has a pretty thankless task. His job - the highest honour a poet can achieve in Britain - requires him to write ditties marking major royal occasions.
Last year he wrote a poem called "Spring Wedding" to celebrate the nuptials of Charles and Camilla. Here's an extract: The heart which slips and sidles like a stream / Weighed down by winter-wreckage near its source - / But given time, and come the clearing rain, / Breaks loose to revel in its proper course.
Is it any wonder the Prince of Wales looked so glum on the big day? For her Majesty's 80th he has excelled himself with "The Golden Rule" which has been set to music by the Composer Royal (another cushy number) Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
The cantata lasts for 15 minutes and will be "presented" to the queen and Prince Philip next month.
This is the third verse: "The sun unwinds its heat through threadbare sky,/ The lakes and rivers map their stony graves,/ The stars still shine although their names grow faint:/ The Golden rule, your constancy, survives."
Doesn't she deserve better and wouldn't it almost make you want to rush out and buy her a box of "Celebrations"? But of course Queen Elizabeth has been around so long that there really is nothing new under the sun. And in fact, she has already been presented with a cantata - over a quarter of a century ago on the occasion of her silver jubilee. Over the years she's received some other pretty exotic gifts.
Two tortoises from the Seychelles; a seven-year-old bull elephant called "Jumbo" from the President of Cameroon and a canary given during a State visit to Germany in 1965. Other odd gifts have included a porcelain wine-bottle cooler in the form of a giant grasshopper from President Pompidou of France, a box of snail shells, a grove of maple trees, a dozen tins of tuna and a jaguar from Brazil. She's been everywhere worth going and has visited 128 countries - many of them more than once; met everybody who really ever has been anybody - from Churchill to JFK, Gandhi to Mandela.
She's launched ships, opened airports and parliament, visited more schools and hospitals than anyone can count and shaken millions of hands.
She has been showered with honours: from Mexico's National Order of the Aztec Eagle (Grand Collar) to Spain's Order of the Golden Fleece (Knight). She's Colonel-in-Chief of the Irish Guards and Sovereign of the Order of St Patrick.
A Freeman of the city of Bellfast, Lord of Mann and Duke of Normandy. She used to be Queen of Nigeria and Ceylon and Pakistan and still is of Belize and Canada and Australia and New Zealand. But the lists could go on and on.
She even has a second birthday, for heaven's sake; her "official" birthday, celebrated at a military ceremony called Trooping the Colour on the second Saturday of June. But there is one thing she hasn't done.
And that's visited Ireland. The Republic that is. She's been to the North many times. In fact her first trip "off the mainland" was to Belfast when, as Princess Elizabeth, she visited immediately after the Second World War in July 1945 with her parents.
Wouldn't it be grand if we - all of us - on this island could even temporarily put aside our timeless squabbles - and ask her over?
It would be the first visit by a reigning British monarch since George V and Queen Mary toured Ireland in 1911.
If we don't get our skates on the opportunity will have passed and, before we know where we are, we could well live to see Queen Camilla in the Irish state coach trundling up to The Park to be received by President Mary Lou. Now wouldn't that be one for the history books?