Happy St George's Day

I suspect that everyone who visits this site today will know precisely what day it is, and as such, allow me to remind you of Cecil Rhodes' famous injunction to one of his countrymen:


"Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life."


Or perhaps this one from the late (and great) former Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, who was born a draper's son in Hampshire:


"There are many things in life more worthwhile than money. One is to be brought up in this our England which is still the envy of less happy lands."


Indeed. And as it now "beer o'clock", to quote Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt, may I wish a very happy St George's Day to Englishmen and Englishwomen everywhere.

Thoughts on the Royal Wedding...

Well, not strictly speaking on the wedding itself, for which I wish Prince William and Kate all the very best, but on the participants themselves; and being old-fashioned, it's ladies first, so I'll start with Kate, or as we must learn to call her: Catherine.


In saying what I'm about to say, I will no doubt be damned to eternal hell-fire by the Diana worshippers who still cling to their view of William's mother as a saint in human form, whose beauty is unsurpassed in the history of human pulchritude, but I think that Kate (sorry, Catherine!) knocks her into a cocked-hat in the beauty stakes; her looks are of a totally different order of magnitude to the late Princess of Wales, even if Diana was a very attractive woman


But that aside, I have to say that I've been a little alarmed at Kate's recent impersonation of the incredible shrinking woman. For a girl who was always slender, her recent weight loss - and it must be in the order of a stone - has meant that the bones in her chest are clearly visible, whilst her legs are now simply thin.


And yes, I know she'll be nervous at the prospect of her wedding - which bride (or groom) isn't - but unlike most brides, she will have the eyes of as many as two billion people on her when she takes her vows; a prospect sufficiently terrifying, I suspect to quell the fiercest of appetites. But please, Kate (sorry again!) once the wedding is done and dusted, have a few good meals and get your weight back up to normal; you'll look even better for it.


Turning to William, the same Diana worshippers who can't (or won't) let her go and can't forgive Prince Charles for 'betraying' her, are clamouring for the succession to leap a generation and see William crowned our next king, rather than his father.


Forgetting for a minute that the rules governing succession to the Throne mean that Charles will become king the second his mother breathes her last (and long may that day be off), irrespective of the wishes of what could be called the anti-Caroline faction, what of William's wishes; have any of them given that a moment's consideration?


I suspect that being bumped up the queue to next-in-line would horrify William, a young man who clearly wants to live as ordinary a life for as long as possible given his extraordinary inheritance. Would the Diana worshippers really want to foist the responsibility of monarchy on his shoulders before he was either ready or prepared for the responsibility?


Really?


Because if they do in the teeth of the evidence that the prospect would horrify William, then they do their idol's eldest son, and by extension her memory, a grave disservice indeed. And let's also remember the relationship William and Harry have with their father. Both of them clearly love him dearly (and he them) irrespective of the circumstances of the break up of his marriage to their mother and there is no way on God's good clean earth that William would agree to act in a manner which would deprive Charles of the birthright he has planned for for over sixty years: he simply wouldn't do it, and nor should he either.


Anyway, moving on, I have a feeling that the Queen will make William a duke on the morning of his wedding, in order that Kate will have a proper royal title, rather than the leaden 'HRH Princess William of Wales', which doesn't exactly do the job, I'm afraid.


No, I suspect that the newly married Catherine will become HRH the Duchess of Cambridge when she says 'I do'; don't ask me why I think Cambridge, rather than Sussex or Albany; I just have a gut feeling about it.


Anyway, let me close by wishing them both well again and by presuming to advise Catherine to have more than her fair share of the wedding cake...

A little Lancashire banter...

I have to say that this intra-Lancashire banter between Freddie Flintoff and Jimmy Anderson made me laugh; I'd never realised Fred was so witty. I particularly enjoyed: "the town mobile phone is working overtime with all extra thumbs to the pump" before suggesting the Burnley "town crier" was being kept busy by reading all his tweets to illiterate townsfolk. Corkers! Just one point, though; Prince William didn't go to to Preston on his recent visit to Lancashire; he and Kate went to a suitably soggy Darwen (the sun had been cracking the flags the day before)and then to Blackburn, which as all football fans will know will have annoyed people from Burnley far more than being compared to the Dingles, or described as more generously endowed in the finger department than the norm! Update Looks like the paragraphing's still knackered...

Football and alleged anti-Semitism...

As I mentioned in my reply to the comment from 'Outed' on the post below this, I have suffered something of a problem internet access-wise, as a result of my trusty seven-year-old laptop going kapowee about ten days ago. So catastrophic was its collapse, that not even the TPS (technically proficient son) could repair it and hence my recent keyboard-silence. Anyway, tenuous link re-established (crosses fingers), I couldn't let this article in today's Daily Telegraph go by without comment. Regular visitors to the Throne will recall that I am a football fan; indeed, I have been attending matches at my favourite team's ground for nearly forty years (good grief, forty years!) and in all that time, I cannot remember ever hearing any specifically anti-Semitic chanting or abuse. Don't get me wrong though; in those four decades, I have heard the most appalling racist abuse at grounds the length an breadth of the country - not for the last fifteen years or more though, I'm glad to say - and similarly offensive chanting aimed at goading supporters of Manchester United by reminding them in verse of the Munich air disaster and supporters of any Welsh club, north or south, it mattered not, by references to the Aberfan disaster. All breathtakingly appalling. However, as God is my witness, the only football fans I have ever heard using the expression 'Yid' or any of its derivatives, are supporters of Tottenham Hotspur themselves; so I suspect that David Baddiel would be well advised to focus the early part of his campaign on encouraging Spurs fans to stop using the expression about themselves before training his guns on others who use it about them.

A little light relief...

Shamelessly nicked from a site called World Weary Detective. Apparently they made him laugh; me too! Read them carefully...