Off my picnic...

There are people out there (you know who you are) that think I'm a bit mad. To be honest, I can easily understand why they (yes, even you) might think that. Some of my views (most, even) are quite bonkers and sometimes even I think I'm a trifle eccentric (away with the fairies as they used to say - when fairies had wings and not handbags). Of course, I put it down to my artistic nature, my drinking, my childhood, society in general, bullies at school, bullies at work, bullies at home, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, my relationships, my ex-wives - you name it and I'll blame it.

I may be a sandwich short of a picnic, an apple short of a fruit bowl, scrambled, crackers, nutty, a fruit loop, a fruit cake, bananas, a fruity trifle, and other food-related expressions appertaining to being a bit unhinged (including as mad as a chicken sausage) but I prefer to think of myself as 'as bonkers as conkers' or 'an acorn short of an oak tree'.

I love the words we use to describe lunacy. Mental illness isn't a very funny subject but being a bit loony is quite a different thing. At it's best it's amusing and entertaining, loveable even. A bit of vaguery, a dithering, a riddler talking in riddles, it's so eminently English - whether you be a crazee cat lady or a pleasantly confused chappie in plus-fours and a tartan waistcoat. It's positively potty. Yes, If I was down in Acapulco I would definitely be going loco, a little moonstruck, gongoozled, a bit whack job, dizzy and dazed, batty, ga-ga, off my rocker, three fries short of a happy meal, whack-a doodle, coocoo even, I'd be in but my lights would not be on, I'd be tuppence short of a shilling and not the full shilling, I'd be mad as a box of frogs, my marbles would all be lost and I'd lose my grip as they rolled away. 

I think you get the idea. 

Of course, this type of madness is more Spike Milligan than Hannibal Lecter, more George the Third than Adolf Hitler. It's a soft gentle madness, rather than a destructive one. 

Issac Newton (apple falling genius and one of the most influential minds in history) was, by all accounts, a bit of a headcase who worked obsessively for days at a time without eating or sleeping. Sometimes he'd have hallucinations and speak to imaginary friends - which to my mind is perfectly normal (surely we all have a six-foot white rabbit as a friend).

Nikola Tesla (lightning making genius and one of those chaps that could communicate with extra-terrestrials) churned out over 200 inventions in his life including the first electric motor, the first remote control, a more efficient electricity than Thomarse Edison could ever dream of (cheating worm that he was), radio, X-ray photography, and was well on the way to a free energy system harnessing the power surrounding the Earth before 'THEY' had it all destroyed and ruined him. He also had an intense phobia of germs and dirt and an obsession with doing everything in threes (apart from sex as he believed that relationships of any sort were an unnecessary distraction). He would compulsively calculate how many centimetres of food he was about to eat, how many meters he walked to get to the loo, and he hardly ever made a drawing or wrote much down - it was all stored in his mind which was the size of a planet.

It would seem that a disproportionate number of artistic and scientific geniuses throughout history have all been just a tiny bit loony tunes (that's all folks!). Many of the greatest literary figures of the past 300 years were bonkers and either drank themselves to death or put a bullet in their mouth. The heroin-overdosed musician is almost a cliche at this point, it’s so common. Hell, you’re almost not even considered a real rock star unless you OD’d at some point - and as for painters and fictitious Victorian detectives, well let's just say black crows and violins are de rigeur ear...

The Roman philosopher Seneca once wrote (with his left hand and in chicken blood on his toga), “There is no great genius without a tincture of madness.” We all kinda know that people who are geniuses are so often a little bit crazy (sometimes a lot). We mainly accept it, even if we don’t know exactly why they are completely not on this planet.

Mental difference (what we now call illness) has become a dirty word or two (despite all the 'open' talk about it and worthy Princes and footballers), an obsession in itself. Everyone is looking for a cure, a way to make everyone 'normal' and in doing so they have invented a new less interesting madness. Well, I say BUGGER that. Embrace your bonkers, your battiness in your belfry, go tip your lance at windmills, it's what makes you unique - even if you are up the bloody tree.

A bit bookish...

So yesterday was World Book Day yet again and all over the country thousands of Harry Potters, Hermione Wotchamacallits, and that Ginger one went into school dressed in badly made gowns carrying cheap plastic wands and wearing black National Health glasses from the 60s. 

World Book Day has been going since 1923 when booksellers in Catalonia, Spain, had the idea of connecting 23 April and books. Vicente Clavel Andrés (no, me neither, no idea, Spanish though, deffo a Spaniard), a Valencian writer, believed that author Miguel de Cervantes should be honoured for all time. Now, I don't know about you but I've never read Don Quixote and I'm not sure that any seven-year-old ever has (or would) either judging by the lack of Don Quixotes and Sanchmo Panzas on their way to school yesterday morning. Originally, the celebration was on Cervantes’ birthday, 7 October, but was later changed to his death day on 23 April (quite a switcheroo there).

It was only in 1995 that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO - so that's what it stands for) officially designated 23 April as the date to celebrate World Book and Copyright Day which might explain why I never went to school dressed as Billy Bunter (Yaroo! I say old bean, is that a scrummy cake I spy? Bagsy the cherry on the top!) The date is also the death or birth anniversary of prominent authors including our own Billy Shakespeare, Wandering Willy Wordsworth, and such notables as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Robert Bridges and Michael Crichton (I bet there were plenty of Valeciraptors out and about yesterday - grooooowlll). Each year, UNESCO chooses a World Book Capital where activities are held and supported by the book industry. In 2018, Athens was chosen as the capital wherein books would be made accessible to all city residents, in other words, a library. Last year it was Sharjah (1001 Arabian nights springs to mind, Ali Babas abound). This year it's Kuala Lumpur and every single child (and many, many very silly childish adults) in the city went to school dressed as Harry Potter, Hermione Wotchamacallit, or that Ginger one.

Over 100 countries celebrate World Book Day. In the United Kingdom, it is celebrated every first Thursday in March because April often coincides with Easter (and too many Jesus's would be a health and safety risk - sandals and long dresses and all that) and 23 April is also the National Saint’s Day, specifically good old St. George (dragons, knights, maidens, white chargers etc, etc).

I get that it's a celebration of authors, illustrators and the importance of reading, but copyright? Copyright is dry, dry, dry, the stuff that literary agents and proofreaders are made of (mainly dust and know-it-all-ed-ness). 

According to researchers, children who love reading are not only good readers, but they tend to develop a broader vocabulary and understand other cultures more easily. I think that 'other cultures' probably means (in this context) the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and the continent of Essos. Alternatively, it could be any one of several million crumby Lego characters, very hungry caterpillars, Dogger (not to be confused with dogging), or (following on from that) that boy in a dress that David Walliams has confused all small boys who have 'mummy issues' with.

Kids are one thing, but dogs and cats quite another. Many dogs and cats were dressed as Harry Potter, Hermione Wotchamacallit, or that Ginger one by their totally sad pathetic owners. Guess what saddos? Dogs and cats dressing up despite the fact that no dog or cat has ever read a book in its life (or seven) seems ridiculous to me. Dogs will be okay with it (dogs are so stupid though), cats not so much. So watch out for cat shit in your slipper if you've dressed your pussy as Harry Potter, Hermione Wotchamacallit, or that bloody Ginger one (collars and cuffs anyone?).

Those dreaded statistical things from 2014 shows that one in five children in England cannot read well by the age of 11. Further research, conducted in 2015, found that similar percentages of 15-year-olds across the UK do not have a minimum level of literacy proficiency (although what the minimum is I have no idea). 18%  of kids in England and Scotland, 15% in Northern Ireland and a whopping (Yarooo!) 21% in Wales. That's almost a fifth of all children wandering around dressed as Harry Potter, Hermione  Wotchamacallit, or that Ginger one, who have no idea why or even who they are meant to be.

So there we have it, World Book Day (the World day that the UK celebrates at a different time to the rest of the world). So who would I be? After much thought, I think I'd like to be Stig Of The Dump. How about you?

It's a gas...

Let's start with a confession. I forgot to order the LPG gas and now we have (to all intents and purposes) run out after this awful winter. Gas power is now strictly limited to such an extent that we are hardly using it at all and the gas at the bottom of the tank is (it appears - although it is invisible) very, very smelly. Fortunately, the shower is electric, we have back up electric oil-filled heaters, an electric oven and just about every electrical cooking implement know to man - microwave, air fryer, sandwich maker, two slow cookers (big and small), toasting machines, kettles, electric teaspoons, so pretty much everything you need to 'survive' and if the worse comes to the worse I can always get the camping stove out of the shed to warm soup with. Failing that I have wood and a chimemiere.

Of course, this means that we have no central heating and our fire, which looks like a real fire but is actually gas, is not in use either and keeping warm has very quickly become an obsession. Well, it is cold and wet and I hate shivering so I'm wearing many, many, many, many, many layers around the cottage and of course the dozens of candles in the living room in the evenings are a great source of warmth, so it isn't so hard (I can't imagine what living on the streets must be like). In fact, it makes me feel quite resourceful living on the edge (haha) despite not being that resourceful at all (otherwise I wouldn't have forgotten to order the gas would I?).

It got me thinking though and took me back to the days (WARNING: nostalgia alert) of the single coal fire we used to sit around when I was a kid. The warmth didn't reach far (not even to the back of the room), particularly if, like me, you were last on the warming pecking order, but it was better than nothing. The myth of ice on the inside of bedroom windows wasn't much of a myth in my case (just a very cold reality) but I did like the patterns the rime of ice made as long as I didn't touch it and get stuck to the glass and how my breath made clouds in the air as I lay in my bed.

My gran had a small coal fire in the kitchen and we'd sit by it feeding it coal from the coal cupboard in the corner. She'd sit in her armchair covered in a knitted patchwork blanket and me in an old wooden chair on the other side. She'd tell me stories as she knitted and we'd listen to the radio as we sat by the fire and sometimes a mouse would scamper through the ashes in the hearth. It was all very Dickensian, cosy though. I liked the sense of belonging I felt as I sat there, stooped and huddled, gazing into the flames and hearing my Gran's stories of times long, long ago about death and starvation and wars and angels marching in the sky. 

Sometimes it was so cold in our house that I didn't want to leave the comfort of the hearth to go to my bedroom and play games on my Xbox (not that Xboxes existed back then, it was just a cardboard box with an X drawn on it) and taking a bath was a very willy chilly experience. The bathroom pipes used to freeze all the time and so did my little pipe. The fire was almost as important as the telly in our living room, so a place by the fire where you could see the telly and feel the crackling flames was a small (but actually huge) heaven. What a change in the way we now live central heating has made. We wander around the house without coats, scarves and hats on, sometimes even in just our nightclothes. It's almost like living in the Caribbean but without the sunshine, monkeys, reggae and rum (so, maybe not anything like it at all then).

I can't help thinking that after this terrible gas disaster (not really so disastrous) that central heating seems to have, to some extent, isolated us from each other. There's no need to sit around the fire and tell stories, no need to all be in one room to keep warm, no need to run to the bathroom and back in the shortest time possible (over two minutes and your nose bits - amongst others - would turn blue), and no need to wear a balaclava, sleeveless pullover, and socks to bed. I'm not saying that I prefered the days of no central heating, but it certainly had a certain spartan charm.

Anway, The LPG gas was ordered last week and we await delivery (it may take up to two weeks as we need a tanker delivery but it is probably coming Friday) and in the meantime, we have gone back to the 1960s almost. No coal fire but the electric oven makes the kitchen warmish (if you leave the door open all day), it's almost cosy and if I stand by the sink, boiling water in the kettle to do the washing-up, I almost feel warmish.

They call it hearth and home don't they? Somehow central heating boiler and house doesn't quite have the same ring (particularly if it's a gas ring with no gas).

Stockpiling...

To start with I'm not a panicker, a picnicker yes, but panicker no. I go through life in this interesting world in these interesting times without worrying too much about stuff and always have. Nothing keeps me awake (well apart from my bladder and a good book sometimes) and I don't think about what might happen in terrorist terms (not that there are many terms with terrorists), plane crashes, food allergies, health checks, nuclear disaster, asteroids. You know all the stuff that keeps so many people awake at night, all night, every night, throughout the night (I do sometimes wonder - if they don't sleep as much as they claim not to - how they keep going).

Anyway, I stray from the subject.

I've never stockpiled anything (unless having a load of wine in for Christmas counts - Merry Christmas cheer everybody). I've never understood that Christmas over-filling the fridge thing, but there I go straying again, so back to the point. I am beginning to think that stockpiling a few things ain't such a bad idea at all. I know that everybody is playing down this Coronavirus thing (keep calm and carry on, wash your hands - happy birthday to you twice - and use a tissue or even your sleeve you dirty person you.) but the underlying message is that the government and medical organisations are (technical term coming) shit scared. Yes, shit scared and scared shitless to go with their clueless and without a clue.

Now, I don't want to go on about the virus (which is pretty rampant, just look at how quickly it's taken a hold in Italy and how they are dealing with it, and in China where they have literally sealed in whole areas, even welding closed apartment block doors to keep people in).  I'm not going to mention the 1918 Spanish Flu virus which killed 50 to 100 million people worldwide and infected at least half a billion. I'm not going to scaremonger with truths like we don't know very much about this virus, not where it developed (or was developed and by whom), how it spreads, how and if it mutates as it goes on its merry way (singing Happy Birthday, or should that be Deathday?), or the fact that we don't have a vaccine or any treatment (a year or so away I keep hearing) for it other than singing Happy Birthday whilst washing your hands.

I'm not going out to buy a Hazmat suit (not this week anyway), but I am going to go and buy some tinned stuff (quite a lot of tinned stuff I think), some staples like pasta, rice, sugar, tea, (and of course plenty of quinoa and craft gins darlings). I'm going to get a load of wine (obviously), a load of toilet rolls (obviously), bottled water, candles, a couple of bottles of Scotch (for emergencies only) a crossbow and a couple of tasers (not really, I'm just joking - but only about the quinoa and craft gin).

Perhaps I've been watching too many dystopian, end of the world, zombie, plague movies where everyone dies and the world is changed forever. Or perhaps I'm just being sensible and preparing for something that is looking quite likely (more likely with each report I hear, and the more the 'experts' predict), and what with the hints being dropped by smiling government ministers and organisations, plus the school closures, flight cancellations, talk of cancelling large events (including football matches thank God), the economic repercussions that are already happening... Well, more beans, please.

The truth is we don't know what is going to happen. It could be no more serious than flu or it could be as serious as the flu of the past that I haven't mentioned. The models are suggesting that the worse case is that 80% of the world population will get it and that will be an awful lot of 'bring out your deads'. Off course, I'm not saying that society will collapse for sure if that happens - but actually, sod it, I am. The health service won't cope, the economy will collapse, God knows what we'll do with all the bodies or feed the survivors, heat our homes, get our medicines, and on, and on, and on, and what about the Premier League? If I keep thinking about it then even I won't be able to sleep at night.

Anyway back to the point again, I'm going to buy a few bits and bobs just in case. I don't think that is panicking, I think that is being prepared (and I wasn't even a boy scout).

Now, go and wash your hands, that'll sort it (and don't forget to sing Happy Birthday).

Soul man...

As Sam and Dave warbled: 'I'm a soul man. I'm a soul man. I'm a soul man. I'm a soul man'. (went on a bit didn't they?).

I love that once I have a thought that I can’t easily let go of it, it makes me annoying sometimes, a bit of a dog with a bone, but I’m like that.  I’ve been thinking about immortality over the last few days and how some believe that the ‘soul’ is immortal. I don’t know for sure if we are born or die with a ‘soul’ or if the ‘soul’ exists at all. I know that I’m sentient in my body, that I’m aware of myself (sometimes too aware what with my legs and back) and I’m pretty sure that awareness develops as we grow and some develop their awareness quicker than others. What did that Fat Boy Slim say? 'Check it out now - the funk soul brother', so that's what I'm doing bro.

If I do have a ‘soul’, for want of a better word, where does it reside? Is it in my mind, my subconscious, my heart, my body, my bottom (not my feet, because that is a sole) or is it simply made up of the way I view things and my experience? Do we all have one, or just some of us and if we do have one that how come so many people can do terrible things? Are there good souls and bad souls? There are certainly arse souls (I know quite a few of them). I’ve met people who seem to have no ‘soul’ at all, people who think they have one simply because of their supposed piety and compliance to rules and values that are usually not their own, others who have a ‘soul’ because they deal in love daily even if they are still very young. In fact, some of the most soulful people I've known were and are children, which begs the question, if we have a soul, do our souls degrade and get weaker as life wears us down on it's grinding wheel? Could it be, as They Might Be Giants jingled, that 'there's a Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch who watches over you, make a little birdhouse in your soul'? 

What is it made from? Spirit (in which case make mine from rum), energy, ectoplasm, wood, plastic, or (and this would probably get The Beatles vote) rubber? To my mind, a large part of what our ‘soul’ could be made from is how we each live our lives to our values and how people remember each of us for those values (in which case I'm up a waterway outlet without a rowing stick). Our ‘soul’ may reside within their heads and not in each of us at all and when we die our ‘souls’ cease to exist except to the keepers of our memory (pass me my medication please, I seem to be on some sort of hallucinatory trip). A ‘soul’ might not even be a given, a right, something to make shine or darken, it may simply be the sum of what we do and who we are in life. How often do you hear people say 'he/she was a good soul' when you are of the opinion (or certainty) that the person they are talking about is as rotten as rotten can be?  It's often the seemingly good soul that murders the victim in the library with the lead piping (that's how I work out who the murderer is and that generally works, especially with Misommer Murders).

I'm with Tom Waits on this: 'Won't somebody tell me, answer if you can, want somebody tell me, what is the soul of a man, I'm going to ask the question, answer if you can'. Upon my soul, I’ll find out one day for sure as I splutter out (or not as the case may be, and not yet I hope). Perhaps I should just trust in my soul for now and grin and 'bare' it. As Soul to Soul said: 'Back to life, back to the present time, back from a fantasy, oww woww. Anyway, I leave you to ponder. I've got another bone to chew on (woof - woof).

Welshing on you...

It was Saint David's Day yesterday, so I thought I'd write a little bit about Welshness. I'm not Welsh but I do have a few of the attributes that are a necessity to the Land of our (their) fathers. Firstly, I can be a right miserable git, but there's more, much, much more. 

I'm sat here in my freezing cottage being pelted by rain and surrounded by daffs and leeks as an old lady plays her harp in the corner wearing the full national dress with one of those funny - not quite witchy - Welsh hats perched on her bonneted head. A male voice choir dressed in Welsh rugby shirts are singing along to that plucking harp whilst Max Boyce is holding forth, telling jokes about Eisteddfods and conducting a group of miners with picks, Davey lamps, and canaries in cages who keep wandering in and out (is that pit pony poo over there?). As yet neither Aled Jones nor Bryn Terfel has arrived, but I'm hoping that foxy yum-yum songbird Catherine Jenkins (aka Octopus - I'd like to get my hands on that calamari to munch with some laverbread) will arrive to join in the joyous Saint David's (Dewi to his mates) Day celebrations.

Of course, the talk is of sheep, who has died, who is about to die, who will die if they don't stop doing this, that, or the other, how the chapel organ has mice (English mice no less), funerals, the rain, the wind, the wind and rain, rugby, poetry (mainly Dylan Thomas - Do not go gentle into that good night, blah, blah, blah) the best way to make Bara Brith, and how to carve a love spoon from the trunk of a Quercus Petraea, one of two Oaks that are native to the UK and has been designated as the Welsh national tree, hence Welsh Oak. Fortunately, thus far, there has been no mention of either Gavin or Stacey popping in because if that bloody James Corden turns up I may well beat him to death with one of the three legs from my spinning wheel.

So no, yes, I'm not Welsh, although I am a descendent of the Robertseseses, which is probably close enough, and I can order a pint of beer in Welsh (peint o gwrw os gwelwch yn dda) and say 'Rhechan fel ci defaid ar jaen gwta' (farting like a sheepdog on a short chain), 'Mewn cachiad' (in the shit), 'Fel ci a dau goc' (like a dog with two dicks) and various other phrases that are useful in daily life (you can look these up). My favourite is Coc y gath - the cats cock (hello Idris, why are you strutting around like the cat's cock? Mine's a peint o gwrw os gwelwch yn dda). Ah, Men of Harlech, Dai bach.

So there we have it, I'm not Welsh by birth but a (coal) mine of information about  Welshness and all things Welsh because I love Wales. Right, I'm off to catch a Welsh Rarebit for my tea (if I can stop it leaping all over the place in the field). 'Hapus Dydd Gŵyl Dewi' to you all.

The Royal Show...

I know we are a monarchy of sorts but honestly, why oh why do we put up with the Royal Show? Oh, I know it provides entertainment for old ladies, the French, Girl Guides, and, of course, the Americans and it does sell a lot of papers and magazines, but really? It was all very fine in the fifties where King and Country was the general opinion, nay duty, of accountants and millworkers everywhere after the Second World War, rationing and prefabs, and, of course, standing up in cinemas when the National Anthem was played and even standing up when the telly closed down for the night (watch the dot) was normal behaviour (normal? standing up to a crumby piece of music that you don't know most the words to is normal? It's not a bloody Elton John concert - thank God!). But just what are we getting for our £1.24 per year per every man, woman, and child as loyal subjects?

Even into the swinging kinky boot sixties all that Royal worship was still going strong (good old (younger) Anne, and that 'show us your cleavage and pass us a fag' Margaret - the naughty beehived minx). But the gloomy seventies began to see things start to slip. If it wasn't for the gin swigging, gambling-addicted Queen Mother (Gawd larv her pale blue frocks and that sweet, vacant, half-pissed smile), I think a coup of one type or another could have been just around the corner even back then in the Winter of Discontent.

The Queen's boys, Charles, Andrew, and that bloody Edward luvvy were hardly inspiring as we moved on with divorces, affairs, Duran Duran, roller skating princesses, and all that other hardly talked about other stuff (bonky wonky). And then all of a sudden it was 1992 and Annus Horribilis, not that anyone understood what that meant dearest Queenie (was it something about a horrible bum? - that'll be Fergie too then. I don't know because by then nobody was bothering with Latin). But in case any of you had forgotten (as I had) what all the fuss was about, here's a reminder.

• Separation of Prince Andrew, from that bloody Fergie parasite (19 March).
• Divorce of horsey Anne from stiff backboned Captain Mark Phillips - 23 April.
• Death of Prince Albrecht of Hohenlohe-Langenburg - 23 April (Who? I don't remember that one but what a Dayus Horribilis the 23rd must have been).
• Publication of Saint Diana's tell-all book Diana: Her True Story, revealing the 'problems' in her marriage and Charlie's affair with Camilla Parker Bowles (aka that trollop!) in the Sunday Times - 7 June 1992.
• Publication of photographs of that raunchy impish redhead sunbathing topless with her friend, John Bryan - 20 August.
• Publication of intimate conversations between the Princess of Wales and James Gilbey from a tape recording of their phone calls - 24 August.
• The fire in Windsor Castle - 20 November.
• Separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales - December.

He haw, that year was better than Cora and Stenders combined with a good shot of Emmerdale thrown in for good measure for Farmer Charlie (it didn't win Best Soap in the National TV Awards though). Of course, none of it was a problem - the whitewash was splashed by the gallon, rules and laws were changed, and the bottomless pit that is the pocket of Her Majesty's loyal subjects was applied (God Save Our Greedy Queen. Long live our nobbling Queen).

The biggest change came with the death (murder some conspiracy theorists say) of the Queen of Hearts in 1997. The other Queen didn't much care (it seemed) and Phil the Greek was rumoured to have done the Greek grudge thing (I iz gonna make you a kebab you can no refusi) and got MI5 to deliver the deathly deed. The queen almost lost the public with that one, but of course, she had the fallback position of using Harry and Wills to tug at the country's heartstrings as they slow-stepped to their mother's funeral and the Royal brood survived. Clever to use two motherless semi-orphan boys to reform her very expensive royal posse into a new format (nice one Lizzie!).

It worked for a while, but the shit continued like shit in any family does with Nazi fancy dresses, unsuitable girlfriends, drunkenness, increasing baldness, and simple general debauchery (and that's just Phil the Greek). More recently Andrew was outed as a potential paedo, Charles built upon his bumbling idiocy and reached a new idiocy level, Philippos was branded a dangerous and senile driver, and Anne's stoic stoicism and grumpiness was lampooned in comedy shows that in the past would not have been made, let alone watched and laughed at by everyone (off with their heads, says Anne).

To top it all, we have Harry and Meghan wanting to be treated like Royals whilst not acting like royals, but demanding privileges that nobody on this planet can expect to get for free (like twenty million quids worth of protection a year and their own Royal brand). Yes, he's the (piss it against the wall) artist formally known as Prince (to use the words of that great wit Bonnie Bon Boyo Jovi).

Now I know that by now some of you Royalist sympathisers will be muttering and swearing about me under your breath (or on top of it for some). But all of this is fact and not me bitchily making things up (I'll leave that to the Royals who never stop squabbling and lying it seems). Isn't it time to say enough? In any other family, some of these actions would have led to prison, ridicule, and disgust, whilst we (the loyal British public) keep throwing money at this bunch of privileged, ungrateful arses.

All I can say is that it's a lot of dosh to spend on a few Royal weddings every decade or so, a Queen's speech or two, that yearly Christmas speech nobody listens to any more, and... Well, nothing else at all really.

Here ends The Royal (shit) Show for today. Terrible bathing costume by the way. That should get me sent to The Tower.