The 4x4 Conflict Scale

I’ve previously suggested that the service a 4x4 is being pressed into is a fairly good indication of the level of conflict, or lack thereof, in a particular location.

It’s a theory I’m developing (as I drink/write this) and I’m fairly sure it’s just a refined version of a wider picture.  If the most sophisticated vehicle in your village is the bicycle that the district nurse uses for her visits, then there is probably going to be little to distract you from your everyday life of goat herding and plotting how to get the fuck out of this place.  If your experience of automobiles is a Morris Minor Traveller then either you live in Halcyon, are a Vicar, or restore classic cars, or all three.  If, like some in the Commonwealth when the Queen used to cruise her dominion on Britannia, your first experience of a car was a Rolls Royce with a lady wearing a crown sitting in the back then yes, everything after this is going to be a disappointment.

4x4s.  If you live in the country, they are a good idea.  If you live in the city, you are obviously worried (some would say unnecessarily) about being charged by a rhino in the Waitrose car park.

Half tracks and tanks.  Remember the days when all we had to worry about was being charged by a rhino in the Waitrose car park?

It occurs to me though that 4x4s are actually a pretty good indication of how peaceful or otherwise a location might be.

The 4x4 Conflict scale

1.  Pristine Landie in a Waitrose car park.  All is well, owner will hesitate to move it for fear of having to find such a good parking space ever again.

2.  Filthy ancient Defender used as all purpose farm vehicle.  All is well.

3.  Ancient pickup with half an inch of loam, some building supplies and two dogs in the back.  All is well.  Also, fishing invite imminent.

4.  4x4 on school run, double parked, morning.  Could be trouble if mummy gets stressed.

5.  4x4 on school run, afternoon.  Could be big trouble if mummy has been drinking at lunch, or if that bitch Jointy parps her horn one more time and I think Simon is fucking his secretary and it’s all so fucking, fucking intolerable.

6.  Pristine Land Rover on a shoot.  Trouble for the other guns, owner may not know what he is doing and possibly got his money, and his invite, because of his proficiency with a shotgun in other circumstances.

7.  Filthy Land Rover on a shoot, back of Landie looks like two working gundogs live there.  They do.  No trouble at all, unless you are a game bird.

8.  BMW 4x4.  Drug dealer.  Beware.

9.  Convoy of 4x4s heading towards the airport at speed.  The President-For-Life is fleeing the country.  So is the contents of the Treasury.  Beware rebels/freedom fighters/glorious liberators.

10.  Pickup with two hound dogs in the back and a bumper sticker expressing forthright opinions about race/religion/abortion or showing support for FOX news.  Fuck!

11.  White 4x4 with UN written on side.  Fuck!  Fuck!  Also, alien invasion!

12.  Red pickup with a heavy machine gun welded into position in the back, manned by teenage boys not in uniform, one sporting a Manchester United shirt, parked near a Land Rover with BBC on the side, both taking fire from an abandoned cement factory nearby.  There goes the neighbourhood, and probably the country.  Bloody Civil War.

Finally.

13.  Like 12, but the kid’s wearing a Chelsea shirt.  Worse.  Failed State.

Some attach importance to what they drive.  Back in the day if you said ‘penis extension’ to somebody they would think you were making a comment about a man owning a sports car, whereas now the internet has ruined the ability for us to feel superior to a man who own a Porche.

Certainly we have the proliferation of metal boxes with wheels to thank for ‘Top Gear’, a show that started out reviewing cars but ended up as, essentially, a 60 minute long aftershave commercial, if every episode had concluded with Clarkson shoving a bottle into the camera and shouting ‘Bloke!  For men!’.

Village Life - the Charter Fair

Wooly decorations adorning the village on Charter Market day.

Many years ago, so long ago in fact that it was before the world was in black and white, possibly as far back as when the world was woodcut-coloured (predominantly black and white, but with the occasional full page of dazzling colour, with a giant letter somewhere in the landscape), some bloke with probably a beard and almost certainly a crown granted the village it's charter.
A charter for a village back in Ye Olde Days was a very big thing, as it was all about status.  The village went from being a collection of shacks at a muddy crossroads with a tavern where weary travellers could be waylaid and their bodies conveniently disposed of in the parsnip fields, to being a collection of shacks at a muddy crossroads with a tavern and a town hall, where decisions like taxing travellers could be taken, meaning you got to take money off them on a regular basis.  It didn't matter that the tavern had a hygiene rating of no stars, this was an age when everything had a hygiene rating of no stars.
Having a charter meant status, the ability to legally burn witches and, depending which way the ecclesiastical breeze was blowing, Catholics or Protestants and, most important of all, having something over on those bastards from the next 'village' along, which was just a collection of shacks at a muddy cross roads with a tavern.  Ha, losers.
Village rivalry a few hundred years ago was settled with the occasional pitched battle (well, 'battle' may be exaggerating things slightly, as it probably consisted of a couple of dozen peasants with assorted clubs).  Then it became all about who had the most peasants left standing after the plague hit town, then who had the biggest church, and so on.  There was a brief return to basics when, in the heyday of football hooliganism, things were settled once again by a battle, this time on the pitch.  In these much more civilised times, rivalries are settled by where beats where in the regional heat of 'Britain in Bloom', which is not to say that local pride does not occasionally result in action being taken in the dead of night with step-ladders and weed-killer resulting in mysterious blight in the neighbouring village's hanging baskets.
Local pride is very much alive and well in the village.  This was clearly exhibited a few years ago when the Post Office, in a misguided move, decided to give the village the same postal address as the nearest town.  The villagers sprang into action; sod 'Save our hospital', this was 'Save our house values'.  The villagers fought long and hard and eventually decided simply to ignore the Post Office, who subsequently also decided to ignore their own advice.  Honour was satisfied.
The crowning glory though was a couple of years ago when a Little Waitrose opened in the village.  Forget having the biggest church, and forget that the village already had an independent butcher, green grocers and bakery, this meant free coffee.  Yes, you heard, free coffee.
So villagers are proud of their village, and fiercely protective of it, including being protective of the charter that gives it it's status.
One of the requirements of the charter is that the village should have an annual charter market.  Back in the middle ages this would no doubt have been quite special, featuring tradesmen selling ribbons, hog roasts and possibly even a witch burning.  Today, it's still a big deal, and rather special in that as well as tradesmen, local people can have their own stalls, in their own front gardens.  It's like a cross between the biggest yard sale ever and the reaction to the council advising that for one day only they will come and pick up all the old crap you've been meaning to take to the dump for years.  Attics and garages are plundered and hugely optimistic price tags are attached to one-step-from-landfill items.
If nothing else, it provides a valuable insight into the mentality of your neighbours, especially the ones that think there's a market for VHS tapes, even one marked 'Derek & Anthea's Sex Tape', and included by mistake.

Postcard from Highgrove

As the Prince of Wales explains in the short video that you watch at the start of the tour of the gardens at Highgrove, one of his greatest pleasures is knowing that the garden is enjoyed by visitors. I'm entirely convinced, for a couple of reasons. The first is that as Prince of Wales, surely you are likely to get great pleasure by having panda and chips for breakfast, just because you can. Also, Highgrove is unsigned and difficult to find. To take a tour of the gardens, you send off for tickets and are sent a date, a time, and directions. A satnav will do you no good, instead, you navigate through the Cotswolds back roads in traditional fashion, with a map and keenly developed bickering skills until, at some seemingly random point, you pull off the road onto a drive.

It's here you think you've made a wrong turn, because you appear to be driving up a very ordinary drive. Thus it comes as something of a relief when you see the policeman. He is there to check your tickets, check your ID and presumably check that you are not a threat to national security, the monarchy, or the monarchy's flower beds.

Before your tour starts you are told that there is no recording at Highgrove. Anyone who has seen Alan Titmarsh's interview with HRH PoW probably wishes this rule had been applied sooner. No cameras or mobile 'phones are permitted. Given that Prince Harry had just that day graced the Internet with his crown jewels and that the ginger nutsack had, pardon the phrase, gone viral, we could understand the sensitivity. Then they explained that you were not even allowed to do sketches. This, I thought, was a little bit harsh.

The Prince explains in his video that he wanted to create a garden that feeds the soul and delights the eye. Certainly I felt my soul, and pockets, lighten as, for the first time in what seemed like a decade, I wandered around without a mobile, a camera or even a wallet (although you are encouraged to return to your car to retrieve the latter and then visit the shop at the end of the tour).

The garden at Highgrove is actually a number of differently themed gardens, separated by walls, or features of the landscape, or hedges. They are also the repository for many of the gifts that the PoW has been given over the years. Most of us, on receipt of a charmingly hideous ceramic knick-jack, would leave it on the doorstep of a charity shop like an unwanted baby in a Victorian novel, but the PoW does not have that option.

And he gets given a lot of crap. And it all goes in the garden.

And it's fascinating, cemented into walls, or paths, or garden structures are plaques or ornaments that he has been given. The is a fabulous 'wall of gifts' made up of carvings made by apprentice masons - it looks like a jigsaw church. And the are bronze busts of HRH in the garden. One might think that having bronze busts of yourself is a sign of egomania and it might be...if you kept them in the house. Busts of yourself in the house can only serve one useful purpose - somewhere to keep your hat. In a garden though, they are decorative and charming. Ironically, thanks to the attention of birds, they could actually use a hat.

The garden is a delight and the tour is clever, first teasingly showing you the private garden area right next to the house, through delightful and very effective iron gates, then taking you into it. After all the secrecy and security, once you are in the grounds you are essentially invited to wander around and touch as much as you want - just don't stray from the group or you will be shot and added to the compost heap.

There are delights and surprises for the eye and the walled garden, with fruit and herbs, feeds both the soul and the senses and, if my scrumping skills had been as well developed as they were in my youth, would have fed the stomach too.

I finished the tour with scented hands as a result of all my herb handling. This is a remarkable place and shows you what any gardener can do with some imagination, vast wealth and a dedicated gardening team. It is the quintessential English garden, down to the borrowing of ideas and of plants and artefacts from around the world to give the impression of being in another country, to the extent that the is a rather lovely Moorish garden near the house, complete with tinkly water feature.

And even if you do not like gardens, it's interesting to see, though not record, where all the gifts have gone and, if you have ever given HRH a gift, you may wish to go to check to see if it adorns a place of prominence, or a suitably shady nook.

For all the wealth and the privilege of the owner what comes through is a vision for an organic, sustainable garden (sustainable meaning in this case never throwing anything away and finding a use for everything) and incredible attention to detail, both from the garden's owner and the gardeners themselves, who toil away like elves in green polo shirts while the tours wander around them.

The guides are interesting too. Luckily, the Cotswolds has a fair proportion of posh ladies to draw on during the season when the garden is open to the public. If you do visit, my advice is to read up on your gardening facts, as they do love to tell tales of visitors who don't know a sheep from a shrub and in the true spirit of recycling the ignorance of today's group will form comic fodder for tomorrow.

As a garden, it's still a work in progress, although anyone who walks around the RHS show, especially the Spring show at Malvern, will see much that is familiar in style and planting. As a house Highgrove is interesting, on the one hand a three story substantial farmhouse, on the other hand not what you would expect as the residence of a future king (but just what you would expect if you were familiar with the Britannia) and as an experience, a fascinating opportunity to stroke the herbs of a member of the royal family.

Most impressive of all? We couldn't finish the cakes from the afternoon tea, which were promptly boxed up for us to take away. The urge to eBay was strong, the urge to finish them later with a cuppa stronger still.

Postcard from Edinburgh - Views and Tattoos

The delight of the festival has been the book festival. The pop-up book shop is fantastic (to clarify, a pop-up book shop is a large marquee housing a temporary book shop, not a book shop that exclusively sells pop-up books, although wouldn't it be great if you had a pop-up pop-up book shop?). I could really have done some damage in here but thankfully had to consider the weight limit on luggage for the flight home and so confined myself to purchasing a paperback, and a hardback roughly the size and weight of a house brick about the history of the British Post Office (how could anyone resist a book that reproduces notice that gives instructions to postmen about keeping their firearms clean and ready at all times?). What was pleasing was that as well as the best sellers, thee was a whole aisle devoted to Scottish authors and Scottish publishers. Here was a wealth of Scottish literature, not all of it about smack.

From one cultural event to another with a trip to Hollyrood Palace to visit the Queen's Gallery, showing a small selection of the Queen's Collection. It's rather hard, looking at the collection, to gauge the tastes of the present Queen, as her acquisitions are based on complementing the pieces acquired by her predecessors.



Hence, there is a lot of stuff from the Victorian era, when even the most modest candle holder from Balmoral had to look at home in a room with tartan on the floor and stags' heads on the walls, so was six foot tall and marble.

There was a lot of stuff from India, where 'gift of' sounds so much better than 'looted by', and where the decorative taste appears to be: cover everything in precious stones, even the swords, although, in fairness, just the pommels, the blades were originally Persian and looked as though they had just been given a perfunctory wipe after last being extracted from somebody.

There was also, and let's be fair - some tat. Royal tat, but tat none the less in the form of Faberge eggs. One in particular was a platinum frame encrusted with diamonds held there only by their perfect cut. Inside was a broach. It must have cost a fortune, looked tacky as hell and was a long way from a 'Kinder'. The royal family have the largest collection of Faberge in the world, most of it acquired from the Bolsheviks after it was in turn pillaged from the murdered Russian royal family. No doubt acquired because it was too good to remain in the hands of murderers. Fair enough.

One stand out piece was a painting by Canaletto of the grand canal in Venice. Light seemed to flood from the painting and barges bobbed on the water. The whole thing was awash not just with canal water but with symbolism and hidden meaning. Like a Dan Brown book. But good.


Perhaps the most striking piece there was a crown. From Ecuador and about 1,000 years old it was a broad band of gold with a fan like the rising sun at the back. Simple and primal, there was no doubt that whoever wore this was top dog. Presented to Queen Victoria just because it was wise to keep a mighty monarch on side.


Out in the fresh air, just time for a scone roughly the size of a small car and then to the Plesance to see Tim Vine. Tim good, venue shite. It's one thing to crowd people into a small room with total disregard for dignity or fire safety laws, quite another to sell more tickets than you actually have unobstructed view.

No such problems that evening at the Tattoo, which was exceptional. The bloke in front was getting a bit over-excited and sprang up and down from his seat to photograph the action. I can sort of understand, as if you have not seen the Tattoo before, you must be thinking 'the folks at home will never believe this!'. The Tattoo is so good that it remains the only show in town that you don't have to be a little bit drunk to get maximum enjoyment out of. Pipes, drums, huge aggressive men in kilts. This is Scotland, especially when they project the St Andrew's cross onto Edinburgh Castle.


By the time the fireworks go off the crowd are in such a state that they are not sure if the pyrotechnics mark the end of the show or the opening salvo in the battle for independence but if the latter, they are for Scotland, and freedom!

An early night tonight - home before midnight, meaning time enough for a trip to the bar and a scotch to aid restful sleep.

Jubalympics

The Duke of Edinburgh, one suspects, had the right idea. When the Auld Trouble flared up (possibly brought on as a result of a pavlovian reaction to once more being in the uniform of a sailor) the old boy enjoyed the jubilee from the comfort of a hospital bed, watching the coverage and self administering morphine whenever Fern Cotton appeared on the screen while being intravenously fed quail puree.

Actually, the Duke did very well to stay upright and show every sign of enjoyment during the river pageant, but then I suppose one of the benefits of being in it was that he didn’t have to watch it. There has been, it’s fair to say, some criticism of the BBC’s coverage but it was always going to be something of a huge ask, making small boats on a large river look interesting without involving sinking any of them. My suggestion would have been to outfit a fleet of peadallows with cannon and other suitable nautical paraphernalia and stick some celebrities in them, after telling them that last man floating gets to be a judge on the next series of Britain’s Got Talent. Seeing Freddie Flintoff bellowing ‘ramming speed’ while bearing down on Bill Oddie would have been a jubilee highlight.

Certainly high and certainly alight were the beacons lit across the land to celebrate the jubilee and, following the latest round of civil defence cuts, test the country’s new invasion early warning system. The beacon was lit on top of the Malvern Hills and, rumour has it, the last revellers trotted down the hill about four in the morning. Like the faces of anyone standing too close to the beacon thinking it is essentially an enormous patio heater, one suspects that the Queen was thoroughly toasted.

Being allergic to, and suspicious of, organised fun, I planned to take refuge from street parties and bunting by dodging into the RA and taking a peek at the Summer Exhibition. The RA is, of course, on Picadilly. Which was closed off. For a street party. Apparently Prince Charles and Camilla were there, sitting at a trestle table, chatting with the locals and presumably hoping that none of their ‘neighbours’ would try and borrow their groundskeeper of whatever the royal equivalent of a strimmer is.






If you wanted to eat like a Prince then for seven quid you could buy yourself The Highgrove Burger (eight quid for Highgrove Burger with bacon) from the Fortnum and Mason burger bar, situated next to their champagne bar. For me the burger bar didn’t quite hit the right note. The chefs lacked the easygoing confidence that you find in the proprietor of a proper roadside burger bar, who is able to maintain a relaxed calm while a seldom cleaned grill simultaneously spits fat and flame at him and the large canister of gas under the counter. It might have been posh but it lacked charm. It didn’t lack customers, well heeled locals in their Hunter wellies and wax jackets ate their pricy burgers and washed it down with plastic flutes of champers. I suppose if you had to celebrate the jubilee anywhere, somewhere within easy reach of quality beef, fizz and heir was the place to do it.


On the train home the train was full of people who had been to the river pageant and it was then that things took a very un-British turn as strangers took up conversations with one another. It was easy to see who had been to the pageant, as they were all damp and they all had Union Flags with the ‘Hello’ magazine logo on them wrapped round them. The carriage looked like a celebrity endorsed BNP rally. What people were keen to tell you was that it hadn’t rained much and that the event was fantastic. It’s true that these folk did have a better time than most, as they didn’t have to suffer Fern Cotton.

The concert? Didn’t really watch it. Much, I imagine, like the Duke, who at that point was probably acting as all unsupervised husbands do, which means that any day now DVD box sets from Amazon of classic telly will arrive at the Palace.

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.

Reflections on the royal wedding - media

The media build up to the day itself was, to put it mildly, frothing. On the day itself the event was as inescapable as gravity. It started with the Today programme on Radio four. This is normally a programme that follows a rather tight format, they have some spurious stories about the latest survey showing that red wine cures smallpox or something, a bit of sport and then the main event, which is one of the two remarkably offensive old gits that present the thing having a go at a politician about something. Since they banned badger fights it's about the only blood sport left and tends to leave the listener exhausted and bitter and still to face the day.

Instead of a belligerent bully belittling a windbag minister, we had jolly presenters out talking to the crowds that had already started to line the route. Surely the BBC missed a trick here, because the questions were uniformally of the 'where have you come from?' and 'are you looking forward to seeing the dress?' variety. I would have liked to have heard the same level of rigour and challenge that is aimed at politicians aimed at some loyalist royalist, with interruptions, accusations of factual inaccuracies and downright insults, although I appreciate that hearing a BBC presenter being beaten to death with his own microphone is not to everyone's taste.

Reflections on the royal wedding - the weather

Last Friday's Royal wedding gave the British a perfect storm of legitimacy to speculate about the weather, a Big Occasion on a bank holiday weekend. In terms of micro-climates, there was probably very high temperatures around the server that does the BBC weather Internet site as their weather page got more hits than a butt at an archers' convention, combined with a lot of hot air from folk gassing about the weather every time they met.

On the day, the weather was perfect, cloudy in the morning to keep the crowds cool and then, during the ceremony, the sun actually came out. This was because, it was explained to me, God is an Englishman. This actually makes a great deal of sense explaining as it does why so many previously inexplicably ghastly things happen to foreign people.

Britannia Week – more booze

As for defence, the Britannia came compete with a complement of marines who, because they bunked next to the bar below decks, were kept short of sleep, drunk and surly. Just the thing to have if some joker pitches up and tries any high-seas jiggery-pokery.

With so many armed men living in an enclosed space, it was important to observe protocols and manners. The last thing you want is to offend anyone who you have to share a small cabin with for month’s on end. One of the innovations on the ship was the ‘Gin pennant’, a small mast, about ten inches tall, with a small pennant attached to it. The officer who was buying drinks that evening would run up the gin pennant and so misunderstandings about rounds would not happen. An excellent idea that should be adopted more widely, if only because pennants are not used as much as they should be and, given the way that English people like to cover their cars, houses and selves with flags whenever the football team are engaged in some tournament, there would seem to be an appetite for flag or pennant related pageantry.


While the ship had its own laundry, post office and sweet shop, it lacked its own printing and engraving workshop. Hence, all the menus for the dinners were printed before the Britannia left England. No pressure on the chef then, who I bet became amazingly adept at adapting local cuisine for his own ends to make sure that what was put in front of the Royal family and guests closely resembled what was on the menu. I bet the guy could carve almost any vegetable out of a potato, and season chicken so that it could resemble anything, up to an including blamange.

The Britannia is more relaxed than the most boutique of boutique hotels, more stately than any stately home, more booze-enabled than a nightclub in a distillery and, best of all, comes with its own monarch and small army. I’ll drink to that.

Britannia Week – the solution to holiday car hire

Of course, once you get to the island you have to be able to get around. This is the 1950s remember and the motor car had not yet extended its polluting reach to every corner of the globe. Like decent booze, if you wanted something, you had to bring it from home. And what could be more practical to carry on a ship and use to ferry Royal passengers around dirt roads than a Rolls Royce Phantom.

You may have been impressed by the ship, but just imagine if the first car you ever saw was a Rolls Royce Phantom. Anything after that is going to be a massive anti-climax; if some joker rolls up in a jeep a few years later and tries to impress the natives about the wonders of civilization, they might politely point out that yes, your toy car is very nice, but it lacks a walnut dashboard and where the hell is the decanter in the back?

Britannia Week - purpose

What nation would not be proud to have Britannia off their shore? Tropical island paradises with blue skies, clear water and white beaches are all very well, but what you really need to set off a view is a fine ship in the middle of it and, letting you know that the Empire is looking after you, no doubt a bloody big destroyer lurking a few hundred yards beyond.

Doesn't it make you feel safe, secure and, best of all, ruled? I should jolly well think so.

Britannia Week - booze

Paradoxically, there’s enough booze on board to float the ship. Let’s start with the staterooms, cabins and function rooms, when the ship was acting as a floating palace (gin or otherwise) the Queen would be entertaining the great and the good of the nations being visited and to do that you have to have plenty of liquor. The booze doesn’t just circulate at parties, the cabins have cabinets of the stuff, the sun deck has a cocktail bar and as for below decks…each rank have their own bar!

The officers has an officer’s mess, with a bar and a lounge area, resembling a comfortable bar at a golf club (complete with a toy wombat that was used in high-spirited games of 'catch the wombat'). The non-commissioned officers have a respectable sized bar, like the bar and function room at a working man’s club with aspirations. Finally the ordinary sailors have their own little bar, cramped, comfortable and cosy this is the least pretentious, most honest and by far the most welcoming of the bars on board, it’s the sort of wee snug country pub that you might find at the end of a walk in the Lake District – except it’s squeezed in below decks next to the sleeping quarters – it’s OK though, there’s a curtain to separate dozing sailors from revelling crew.

Britannia Week - the ship

The Royal Yacht Britannia is now moored at the Port of Leith, in Edinburgh. I suppose that, officially, it is decommissioned. Such an odd word, used to describe nuclear warheads when their plutonium heart is removed, but not, I think, appropriate here. The purpose of Britannia was, secondarily, to convey the Queen of the greatest country on the face of the planet around the world (well, the bits accessible by water) in an appropriate style but the primary purpose was to sit anchored in the bay, looking fabulous and representing a bit of Great Britain come to visit your country (and oh, is that a type 42 destroyer behind it, don’t worry, that’s just here for your protection, now sign those mineral rights over and you can come and meet the queen).

If the purpose of Britannia is to convince people that Britain is indeed Great, then it has not been decommissioned in any sense. I walked onto that ship a staunch republican, a view formed by many years careful consideration and one that has been baked to the point of bullet-proof hardened opinion by years of debate, revisitation and assuaging of doubt about whether it was possible to be a patriotic republican.

I walked off a Monarchist and an imperialist. In my defence, I’m pleading seduction.

There’s much to be seduced by. Firstly, the ship is beautiful, not like those huge white private yachts you see in the papers these days, which come with their own helipad, swimming pool, tennis court, greyhound track and missile defence shield (BTW: if you are sold something as an optional extra that you have only previously heard of on ‘Star Trek’, it is because your gullibility is only exceeded by your wealth) and, no doubt, a troop of heroin-addled sex trafficked eastern Europeans below decks.

No, if you’re going to have a big white yacht, it needs to be crewed entirely by lesbians and have a hope port of your secret volcano base where you plan to take over the world.

Britannia’s lines are beautiful. It has no helipad, it has launches. It also comes with quite a few extras, of which more later.


Inside, it’s understated, designed to look like an English country house. Indeed it resembles Churchill’s home; Chartwell and is also reminiscent of Hemmingway’s home in Cuba. Can it really be true that all you need is a sofa and a table, and a bloody huge well stocked drinks cabinet? It may be that the three are reminiscent because the style is early 20th Century. The reason for this is obvious, if you are the Queen, you only need to buy stuff once, because it never wears out. The telephones still in use are the same as those used at Buckingham Palace and are delightful wood and bakelite affairs. One thinks them quaint until one realises that they have a button on them that reads ‘the Queen’. Got an app for that? Thought not.

Modern houses, with their flat sceen tellys and games consoles and so much crap could take a lesson from Britannia. Elegance is a few seats and a piano. Okay, so HMQ was able to have Noel Coward at the ivories, but the point is Ikea and clutter is not the way forward.