ON LIVING IN INTERESTING TIMES

ON LIVING IN INTERESTING TIMES.

When Queen Elizabeth II died, I was surprised how sad I felt, for I have never been a royalist.   I can remember the queen’s coronation – I had been around 3 – and I had rather a sceptical attitude even then for I remember thinking, why all this fuss, and wondering why I had been given a mug – what did that have to do with the queen being crowned?   But the Queen’s lifelong dedication to what she perceived as her duty must be admired, and her high standards of behaviour were   an example to us all.   Apart from being an actual  Queen she carried the archetype extremely well, which few women can do.

I am by no means confident that the same level of praise can be applied to the newly appointed king.   It is a British tradition that one does not criticise the throne’s  incumbent and I will observe this rule.   I do rather object to a head of state being appointed with no assent from The People.    I concede he has done nothing to offend us yet, but the day is young.

I notice Camilla is always referred to as the queen-consort,    Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and Queen Mary were also queens consort but it was not felt necessary to define their status so precisely and these ladies were simply known as ‘the queen’.

We are surrounded by women in prominent political positions, nót necessarily to the benefit of female reputation for high office.   Líz Truss I have  written about already as ‘a joke’ and I stand by my view.   I have always given incoming Prime Ministers the benefit of the doubt and credited them with having thought deeply about the problems faced by the country during their time in office, and having workable ideas which might fix them.   The desert that was Miss Truss’s inner landscape – empty with just sand blowing in the wind was alarming to view, and I did not feel sorry about her departure.

Another lady  in a prominent position is Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister for Scotland who has just asked  our Supreme Court  whether,  England having refused her request for a lawful referendum, she can go ahead and carryout the vote on her own authority.   It cannot come as much of a surprise to you all, that the ruling came back, No, she couldn’t.      I would not put it past Nicola for her to have raised the matter at this time, hoping for a NO reply, because nothing is more likely to  draw people to the cause, than for the English to have the impertinence to deny them the opportunity.    Who do  the English think they are?  The dominant nation, is the answer,  the country within the union that can outvote everyone else, and therefore can do whatever it likes.

We come back to my proposal that we opt for a federation, with the north of England a separate region from the South (or however you decide to divide it); the house of government for the federation somewhere in the middle of the country, the Palace of Westminster left to London as its seat of government, and certain matters (defence, foreign affairs, finance) left for the federal government; with a head of state (which could be the crown if a majority voted for that).

The Prime Minister ought to have replied, with a smile, that she could hold a referendum (at Scotland’s expense) whenever she liked.  He had confidence in the prudence and sense of the Scottish people that they would see that the advantage lay in an alliance with England.  He hoped they chose to remain inside the union.   He valued the enormous contribution they had made to the prosperity and culture of the United Kingdom but whatever the outcome he would hope to remain a friend and supporter of Scotland.  If the English could have this generosity of spirit, Nicola would have no case to present to the people of Scotland. 

The Chinese had a saying, May you live in uninteresting times (which were deemed to be uneventful and therefore safer and more prosperous.)  My friends, I put it to you.   We live in interesting times.

ON NOT WRITING THE OCTOBER BLOG

I hope you will forgive me for not actually writing the October piece during the actual month when I tell you that we have moved house and are now comfortably installed.   We are pleased with our choice.  Our sitting-room and first bedroom windows face full south and so these rooms are always warm.   We have a lovely view to a large  wood and the South Downs beyond. We have only one neighbour on our left who passes our windows.   We can sit on our patio in the sunshine and watch the wind rustling through the trees.

There is very little extraneous noise and the road beside us is busy enough but appears to have quiet cars.    I am astonished that there does not seem to be any aircraft noises at all – Gatwick cannot be more than 20 minutes away and we are still in Sussex after all.

The apartments round about us have about a fifty percent occupancy but we never hear them.    There is a secondary school just behind us, but we cannot see it.  We do however hear the children in their breaks, which I have been able to hear in all my houses and find it pleasant.

I was not confident of being able to decorate the apartment  to its best advantage, but when we laid our furniture out in it, the  result was pleasing.   We hung up our paintings and built bookcases and cabinets for china and it all looked good.

There were some downsides of course.   There’s the stuff that you lose (nysteriously.)   A bag containing Japanese china, the only pieces I retained having divided the rest among  my children, went to the charity shop by mistake.   I lost a pearl necklace with a heart shaped lapis lazuli pendant.   I later discovered it in a plastic bag surrounded by 9 other necklaces of equal value which I hadn’t even noticed were missing.   I lost one of a pair of small black wooden cats, sent to me by Kerri when she was in Japan.   How can you lose one of a pair?    Or did he just see his opportunity to light out for freedom and truth like Huckleberry Finn?

We have retained only a fraction of the books we owned.

But I think it was the right decision and that we will be comfortable here.

It is a pleasure to begin to have friends to visit us.   There is a restaurant and coffee shop on site where the food is very good and prices are reasonable and it is fun to go there and eat with our guests.

We are so fed up of shuffling stuff but we can see the  end in sight.

So having sat down to get October off my list, I haven’t done so.   There’s always tomorrow.

PS  My Japanese china hadn’t gone to the charity shop.   It turned up and I was delighted to see it.   With it came a little set of china pieces that might have graced a lady’s dressing-table – a white china basket and three small lidded dishes of various shapes decorated with pink and green flowers and foliage.   I’ve always been rather ashamed of this unsophisticated choice.  It’s definitely not austerely elegant like the Oriental ware.   It’s the kind of thing a 7 year old girl might like to keep beside her Peppa Pig collection.   But I really like it and think it’s very pretty.   I think, so what?   I can have a lapse of taste occasionally, can’t I?   So it stands in my china cabinet, beside the Japanese tea set.   Now if only I can find my Peppa Pig memorabilia…