State opening of Parliament

Pageantry.

The difference between pageantry and mere tradition is pomp.  Morris dancers, in a pub car park, a group of bearded men enjoying themselves, temporarily free from their traditional artesian morris-men occupations of cooper, smith, chartered accountancy and number two at the bank gathering to annoy the public, that’s traditional.  Add pomp, and you have pageantry.

The state opening of Parliament is pageantry.

The Queen takes the short ride from Buckingham Palace to the Palace of Westminster in a horse drawn coach so ornate that the animators at Disney would, if it had been on their drawing pads might have asked ‘too much’?  The footmen, servants, flunkies and, of course, troops of double-hard soldiers, sailors and airmen accompanying her are out of their now-traditional sand and blood-of-the-enemy field wear and in smart dress uniforms.  Even the Parliament flunkies wear tights.  There’s nothing like seeing a monarch hold Parliament in the palm of her hand to assure you that democracy is safe for another year.

There are other traditions too.  The traditional closing-of-the-roads.  Taxi drivers are now a central feature of this, picking up passengers and explaining that because the Mall is closed to traffic, they will have to go on and on and on about this for the duration on the journey.  The traditional overtime-of-the-Met.  Do you know why coppers always look so bloody happy during these occasions?  Because they are on double-time due to having to come in on their holidays.  And of course the traditional putting-out-of-the-crowd-barriers, leaving crossing points manned by smiling policemen who are there to ensure that the public can get across the traffic-free roads in safety without being hit by a passing Cinderella lookie-likie coach.

The public, usually in a rush to get somewhere, put up with this with tremendous patience.  They will wait at crossing points for seemingly no reason because they know that five minutes later, there may well be the clip clop of a monarch swooshing by in guilded glory.

Alternatively, they are held back because their path will soon be crossed by a troop of troops returning to barracks.  The public wait patiently for two reasons.  The first is out of proper respect for the troops in question and because it’s always a bit of a thrill to see the boys and girls in uniform striding briskly.  The second and less widely discussed reason is that British troops have been fighting in bloody conflicts for over a decade now and there is every chance that last week, these smartly turned out young men and women were being shot at by nasty men in beards.  This means that if you kick up a fuss about having to get across now dammit and lunge through the barrier, the natural reaction from the column is going to be to identify a potential threat, shoot you in both legs and then call in a drone strike to ‘make safe’ any explosive vest you may have been wearing.

All in all, better to stand back and enjoy the show.

Nature Notes Special - Floody Hell!

Water used to be our friend, our playmate.  We shower in the stuff, we add bubbles to it and bath in it, sometimes with candles.  We add bubbles to it and we drink the stuff, sometimes with a slice of lemon.  We water our plants with it, we water ourselves with it, we fill big pools and swim in it, we fill slightly smaller pools and communally bath in it after rugby games.  We even swim with dolphins in it, we like water so much that we can stop thinking 'fish poo' for long enough to splash about with Flipper in it.
Recently though, water has become the implacable foe, the slow creeping menace that inches towards the nation's doorsteps, or the rushing torrent, the same brown as the underwear of anyone unlucky enough to be caught in it.  The floods have come, and come, and come.
It is now, officially, beyond a joke.  What started before Christmas as the 'storm surge' turned to filthy weather at Christmas, leaving people with no power, a big raw turkey and realising that KFC for your Christmas dinner isn't really all that bad, as it means no sprouts and extra chips all round.  Ironically there was an advert doing the rounds over the festive season that posed the question 'can you barbecue a turkey?'.  Yes, you can is the answer, but you'd only know that if you had a telly, meaning you had power, in which case, you wouldn't be wrestling a reluctant barbecue from the back of the shed where it's become entangled with hose pipe, bicycles, cobwebs and the other Summer paraphernalia, but instead sitting snug getting hammered on red and waiting for the oven timer to ping before forgetting to put the scouts on, like any civilised person.
For future reference, yes, you can barbecue a turkey.  A mate of mine did it one year, even though he didn't have to.  A Webber kettle barbecue is best, lots of coals that are well banked for a constant heat, then drink red wine until its ready and you are pissed enough not to notice you've barbecue a turkey.  As with most cooking, it's all in the preparation, in this case, uncorking breakfast.
As the days turned to weeks, the rain continued to fall.  The television showed spectacular pictures of huge waves crashing over sea defences and nightly heart-rending images of flooded front rooms.  There was nothing to be done, it would appear.

Then Prince Charles visited a flooded village.
Several things then happened, very quickly indeed.
The first was that question 'what use is the monarchy in the twenty first century?' was answered, as the Prince got blanket TV coverage and sympathised with the plight of the flooded villagers.  He then, one imagined, 'phoned the prime minister and gave him a Royal bollocking.  Because the next day the prime minister was chairing the government's emergency committee after which the army was deployed.
Following Prince Charles's example, politicians unwisely began popping up in wellies in villages.  Unlike the Prince, they were bollocked by very angry villagers who wondered what the fucking fuck they had been doing for the last few weeks.  Hint: if the answer was not 'filling sandbags' they you looked like a prize tool.
The other question that was answered was 'Is there more to UKIP than racism?'.  Yes, yes there is.  There's stupidity too.  UKIP's leader, Nigel Farage, was seen dressed in what one imagines a repressed country squire might look like, in suspiciously new wax jacket and wellies, droning on about how we should cut the foreign aid budget and use it for flood defences.  The BBC bloke then asked what he was doing to get relief money from Europe, which is available.  The answer - f**k all, Mr Farage apparently believing that the entire structure of the European Union closes down on a Sunday.  Next item on the news, EU officials making a statement about some ruling or other, on a Sunday.
As with many disasters, this adversity has brought out the best in people.  Communities coming together to help one another, the British Army doing their usual spectacular job in crap conditions, and monarchy leading.

Brands, marketing and a right royal thirst

Brands are important. Global brands protect their image fiercely, cracking down on shoddy, knock-off counterfeit versions of their products that are knocked up in sweat shops by children, with trading standards officers swooping or swooshing on market stalls and car-booters and confiscating trainers, hats and whatever else they think will make good Christmas presents for those members of the family they do not like, but feel obliged to gift to. (They never, however, drink any of the confiscated counterfeit booze, although they do use it to clean the grease off their bike cogs).

Kinky Friedman once wrote that the three most recognisable brands in the world were Elvis, Jesus and Coca Cola. Two blokes famous for making comebacks and a fizzy drink as the most recognised brands globally? Probably true. I reckon more people have heard of Elvis than Microsoft, even today.

But lets allow for some regional input here. The Queen. That’s a pretty famous brand in the UK. So much so that when one says ‘The Queen’ one instantly knows which Queen you mean. You don’t have to bother with the full ‘Queen Elizabeth II’ title and then bang on about dominions and being defender of the faith. The Queen is the longest serving monarch alive today and as such, pretty much defines the brand. Other European countries have royal families that work, go on bicycles and are seen as ‘modern’. The Commonwealth is lucky enough to have a monarch who realises that subjects have certain expectations of their monarchy and works hard to fulfil it.

Possibly one of the reasons The Queen is so embedded in the consciousness is the ubiquity of her image. She’s on more than tourist tat souvenir tea towels; she’s on coins, currency and stamps, she’s everywhere.

Also a dominant brand is Guinness. Other stouts are available but chances are that if you walk into a pub and fancy a pint of the black stuff, you order a Guinness, not a pint of stout. The Guinness image probably runs The Queen a close second in terms of penetration of the national consciousness, ask people to picture a Guinness and they will instantly picture a pint glass of black beer with a white head, possibly with a shamrock in it if the barman is a tit or a crudely drawn cock if he is a wag. Other images associated with the brand are baffling but universally acknowledged as ‘clever’ tee vee adverts, as well as a huge back catalogue of ‘classic’ adverts for the brand, dated by their exuberant claims for the benefits of drinking the stuff. Advert: makes you strong, gives you iron, there’s a baby in every bottle. Reality: like all alcohol it keeps the working classes pissed and poor.


These two great brands came head to head yesterday as The Queen visited the Guinness brewery in Dublin. The brewery has a museum inside it – ‘the Guinness experience’ – and I have to say it’s well worth a visit if, hitherto, you thought that ‘the Guinness experience’ was the monumental bowel movement you experience the morning after a night of binging on the stuff. You see how it’s made and then end the tour in ‘The Gravity Bar’, a pleasant bar situated at the top of a tower featuring panoramic views of Dublin. You have a pint of Guinness and wander off to do some shopping for Guinness branded souvenir tat.


The Queen looked round the brewery and ended up in the bar, where the barman pulled a pint and put it on the bar in front of her.*

Now, with the world’s press watching this had obviously been too good a marketing opportunity to miss. The sight of The Queen sipping from, or even grasping, a pint of Guinness would have been on the front page of every newspaper in the UK.

Of course, no woman of The Queen’s age or class is going to drink from a pint glass, so she was never going to sip it (thought if her grandson had been there I’m sure he’d of downed it in one, burped the national anthem and demanded another) never mind take a long pull and remark ‘that hit one’s spot’ or similar.

(Although, as anyone who has drunk in a Young’s pub will know, the late Queen Mother had a go at pulling a pint at a Young’s pub, as did the Prince of Wales. The photographs of these events hang like portraits on the wall of every Young’s pub. What’s interesting is how natural they both look doing it. The Queen Mother was of course an Edwardian lady, but she looks for all the world like somebody who could be landlady of the greatest little boozer you have ever visited, keeping the place going while her husband is away during the war. Charles looks very much like a work-experience student working behind the bar, trying to do a good job while the adults are in charge. Which is not a bad job description for being Prince of Wales.)

It would be good to record that The Queen looked at the pint as if the barman had just placed a steaming shit on the bar, with a ‘and what has this to do with me?’ expression.

The reality was infinitely sadder for the Guinness marketing anoraks. She regarded it that the trademark amused curiosity and pleasure that she exhibits whenever she visits some backward country and they place a local delicacy in front of her, be it a Cornish pasty or some sort of fermented yam concoction that the village head man chews and then spits up into a baboon skull drinking vessel.

Surely Guinness missed a trick, if they had served a small sample in a champagne flute, I reckon it’s evens she would have tried it. Guinness would have had their photograph, a new market would have opened up as the sort of women who only drink sherry would be thinking ‘well if The Queen likes it…’ and started drinking Guinness out of flutes, which Guinness could also manufacture and sell. Imagine it, The Royal Guinness; two champagne flutes with the harp logo and name on and a can of the stuff to fill them, all in a presentation box with ‘that’ photograph. That’s Christmas sorted.

*I wonder what happened to The Royal Pint. As previously mentioned, the place was full of hacks. One suspect it went the way of all alcohol when journalists are present. South. Quickly.