No.394 Of Rule Britannia and the Royals

I spent a good part of last weekend in Edinburgh. I had forgotten what a great city it is and bathed as it was in glorious sunshine it made for a great two days of relaxation.

On Saturday afternoon I visited the Britannia which was decommissioned as the Royal yacht in 1996..

It's an astonishing vessel and a fine museum to how Royalty did Royalty from the early 1950s up until very recently.

Each visitor is given a handheld guide which tells you all the secrets belonging to each room as you go around. What's worth listening to is the lines in between the lines. For example, it tells you that a double bed didn't make it onto the ship before the honeymoon of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in the 80s. Then you see the single bedrooms of her Majesty and Prince Philip laid end to end at the back of the ship. It had a shared door where presumably the Prince could steal in at the dead of night and lament on the end of Her Majesty's bed just how ghastly the evening's pudding was.

The main dining room is breathtaking. It took 3 hours to prepare the 120 places with each item of cutlery set down with a ruler to make sure it was placed exactly 3 centimetres from the each of the edge of the table.

Until 1970 the Marines who travelled with the Royals to provide the band music when they arrived at port slept in hammocks but by the early 1990s they were sending as many as 6 shirts a day to the laundry room as they changed from one formal duty to another.

Different world then I thought as I jetted back to Belfast for £50 on my Easyjet flight.

No.393 Of Raised Expectations

I went swimming this morning for the first time in almost two weeks to see the Early Birds for I have missed their "craic" recently. For some reason they weren't there. May be like me getting up at the crack of dawn to make the 7.15a.m. cut is proving increasingly unappealing and difficult.

This evening I'm off to Edinburgh to see a musical written by an old friend of mine Julian Wagstaff called "John Paul Jones". Julian is a buddy from my university days in Glasgow. He was (and most likely still is) one of those very annoying people who could turn his hand to anything and do it well first time and most times do it quite brilliantly. We first met in a beginner's German language class. As I struggled to get my head round the grammar of the language and my tongue round the accent to him the former appeared obvious and the latter was well like he was just remembering the language rather than learning it for the first time. Sehr ärgerlich.

Probably about two years later I went to see him in a play he was in whilst studying in Berlin. It was the first time he had ever acted but you'd never had known it. Later that year he came to a party I had organsied whilst working at the European Parliament in Luxembourg. I asked him to bring his guitar which I had seen him carry about at Uni a few times to play a few songs if the moment seemed right. It didn't but that didn't deter him. He just got up in front of a large crowd of people he didn't really know sang and played a load of rock songs accoustically and raised the roof.

Here's wondering if he manages to raise the roof tonight. I expect so....

No.392 Of Tony, Charles and John Prescott

I said I'd read five books this year on leadership. I'm book four at the moment Tony Blair's "A Journey".

There's a beautiful part of the book where he describes his relationship with the lovable rogue and great Northern working class maverick John Prescott. It goes like this :

"I bumped into Prince Charles who told me he had had a meeting with John Prescott recently.
"Ah," I said, how did it go?
"Fine, fine" Prince Charles replied with a somewhat distracted air, "except...."
"Yes?" I said encouragingly, knowing some Johnism was about to emerge.
"Well", he said, looking round to see we were undisturbed, "does he ever do that thing with you?
"What thing"? I said.
"Er, well when he's sitting opposite you, he slides down the seat with his legs apart, his crotch pointing a little menacingly, and balances this teacup and saucer on his tummy. It's very odd."
I've never seen someone do that before. What do you think it means?"
"I don't really think it means anything really, I said
"Hmm. You don't think its a sort of gesture or sign of hostility or class enmity or something?
No" I said "he does that often with me"
"You mean" I interjected "he's making a working-class point against you, upper class and me middle class?"
"Well it could be" he said
"No, I think he just likes drinking his tea that way"
"Yes you're probably right" he said, plainly puzzled and unpersuaded, it's just I've never seen it done before.

No.391 Of Men and Their Dogs

I was in pain at 7a.m. this morning. No not stomach ache or nausea but from a stitch. For I had decided to run from the office to Lough Neagh and back at the crack of dawn and wow did it hurt..

Mind you it was a beautiful morning with a blood ride sky looking over the Lough as I "sped" round part of its shoreline on my way back to the office.

The only disadvantage to running at such an early hour is that that's the time when most of the dangerous dogs get walked on the basis that few other folks are around for them to attack. So each time I overtook a walker and his dog I did so with a certain amount of trepidation. Were they both going to step aside or would one try and unsuccessfully grab the other while I watched Mutley try and take a tasty lump out of my leg?

Dogs I have decided are much like men. In Glasgow when I worked as a barman I soon learnt that the men to be really wary of were the short ones with a complex and something to prove. This morning the Alsatians were carefully watched. The Jack Russells were given a wide birth.

No.390 Of Beauty Natural & Contrived

Boy nature's looking great at the moment. The huge tree outside my house that seems to get closer every year to my lounge window is just about to turn a glorious golden yellow while the woods nearby was bathed in glorious twilight sunshine on Friday evening.
I just wish I could be so complimentary about my new kitchen and extension for both are putting up quite a fight at the moment as I strive to take them to a state in which they could be said to amount to beauty in the eye of any beholder.
I spent a good part of the weekend painting. For some reason there's one patch on the wall that just doesn't seem to want to take my Magnolia emulsion despite my three goes at it. I'll try another final go late tonight when the wall's not expecting me. Failing that I shall plonk my biggest picture right over the top of it. No point letting it turn personal....

No.389 Of Images & Imaginings

There are two images we snapped whilst away on holiday in the Middle East that proved to be really memorable for different reasons..

The first is of a lone man I came across in the desert sands of Syria. He was standing on a rock wearing a beautiful body length Thoub (a long one piece Arab dress for men) which was blowing and fluttering behind him in the strong wind which thankfully was also cooling both him and me down. He was staring intently all around him and scanning as far as the eye could see. Through a bright smile punctuated by the odd golden tooth he asked "Where you from?" "London my friend" I replied trying to keep it simple. "Welcome" he added. He stated with some concern"I have lost my two camels. Have you seen them?". It struck me that if camels bugger off in such open space they can really go some and might not be seen for days for desert heat doesn't seem to bother them at all. He had a problem on his hands. I told him I hadn't but would keep an eye out for them.

The second image is of an Iranian Imam who joined us in a minibus on the journey from Beirut to Damascus. Neither Youngen nor I liked him from the start which wasn't very fair of us for we hardly gave him a chance. Youngen thought he looked like Mr Bean and me the baddie out of... well just about any film you can think of really. He refused to speak English or French to me and at every stop stood outside the bus talking to no-one but somehow appearing to watch each one of us closely. In Damascus we were dumped unceremoniously onto the pavement out of the minibus and left to fend for ourselves but not before Youngen snapped Imam Bean giving me a final good riddance of a farewell stare.

No.388 Of Whom?

I was waiting for my Gate to be called last night at Gatwick airport when a gentleman came and sat next to me. He looked vaguely familiar. After some contemplation I finally clocked him.

I guess you might say he's famous for the women around him. He used to be one woman's FD and is also the father of a well known TV personality.

He was doing rather well at Sudoku but then you'd expect him to be good with figures.

Answers on the modern day equivalent of a postcard please...