Uncle Rob Gets an Oboe? Knighthood for Old Pa Hurley?

It was a busy day today. After trying for the umpteenth time to unlock a phone from O2, who have been as helpful as a boil on the posterior, I decided to clear out the shed, which hadn't been done for months (after what seems like an eternity of work leading up to Christmas left me feeling like a piece of Alex Ferguson's match-time chewing gum). So with cardboard boxes flying hither and thither (and back to hither) pots of paint, bikes, scooters and all manner of chattels being cast to the Easterly biting wind, I didn't hear the dingaling as a text message was received deep in the deepest pocket (and I have deep pockets as my children will attest).

So when I read that my uncle Rob had got an oboe, I thought that was 'nice' but, with all due respect, it's a late(ish) age to be doing such things. After all, we're waiting for the results of our littlest one's level two violin exam. But you do hear of these "silver surfers" who start a new venture, such as learning Russian, taking up the drums, or bungee jumping.*

So it came as something of a relief (no offence to oboists one and all) to find out that uncle Rob hadn't taken up the oboe but had rather been given the O.B.E. in the Queen's New Years Honours List, for his services to charity.

So with one gong safely in the bag for the family, it's high time we started lobbying SA Brains Ltd for some worthy reward for Old Pa Hurley, after all over all the many years "Hollow Legs Hurley" has been quaffing ales at the Park Cons, he must have kept many hundreds of SA Brains employees in, erm, employ; not to mention keeping their extended families in the opulence they are accustomed to.

As one of the four 'sins that cry to heaven for vengeance' is to defraud a working man of a just wage, by handing over a bright shiny penny for every quart of ale and thus ensuring, indirectly, that the workers of SA Brains are given their full wage due, might we not suggest to the powers that be that Old Pa Hurley has carried out great works of charity, on an ongoing basis, for the material benefit of a good number of workingmen? Not to mention the many and great developments in the brewing process that must have occurred during his ever-so lengthy life, which I would humbly suggest have been spurred on in the full knowledge that their fruits would be tasted by the old venerable man of Roath.

So three cheers for 'Uncle Rob' Parsons** for his OBE (and a polite applause if he has taken up the oboe too) but let us begin campaigning here and now for the due recognition of Old Pa Hurley.

Arise Sir Old Pa Hurley! Knighted for his services to employment, research and development, charity and dog-walking.


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*Old Ma Hurley may be taking notes...

**Robert Parsons was also the name of one of the first Jesuits to return to Elizabethan England on a Papal mission to bring the Sacraments to a suffering people, accompanying St Edmund Campion in 1580 who would be captured and horrifically martyred. Parsons went on to found seminaries across Spain and the first post-Reformation English Boys' Catholic School (in France). For a great book, which reads like a boys' own adventure, on the Jesuit missions read God's Secret Agents by Alice Hogge (I bought it cheaper on Amazon - Old Pa "10p doughnuts" Hurley would approve).

£81,100.01 for Beatrice's Toilet Seat Hat?

So Princess Beatrice's hat sold for £81K.


What a mad, mad world.

You can get toilet seats at your local DIY emporium for a tenner.

Is this the keyring she took to the wedding?

It's not so much the Princess and her hat - as the Emperor and his clothes.

At that price I can only be certain of one thing: my dad didn't buy it! Mind you, he still thinks £20 is expensive for a pair of trousers. Old habits die hard.

And This is One's Medal for Having One's Trousers Pressed

Prince Charles in his Welsh Guards uniform.

One blog I read this afternoon called the Royal Family "benefit scroungers." A bit stronger than I was hinting at earlier, but I do get mixed feelings on these occasions.

No doubt my children will all label me "gaaay" but I have to say that Kate Middleton's dress met with my approval. Very plain, almost old-fashioned (one talking head on the Beeb said it was "medieval") yet with the lace arms etc. -- all very good.

I do wonder though what all the medals so many of the royals wear are actually for. Making one's own tea? Arranging the servants? Night clubbing? Cheating on one's wife?

Pip pip.

Royal Wedding: Mixed Feelings. The Good, the Bad (and I'm the Ugly)

The British Royal Arms

Yes I have succumbed.

I am not a monarchist by nature, but being married means give and take and so the bunting has gone up and I'm even watching the celebs going into Edward the Confessor's Abbey (yes, it was Catholic - and will be again! Hurrah!).

I have mixed emotions about today. Of course I wish the couple well (I am nothing if not a great believer in the sanctity of the Sacrament of marriage), and hope their marriage does better than some of the other ones in recent years (Anne, Andrew and Charles spring to mind).

I think if there were a Welsh royal family (last Prince of Wales, Llywellyn the Last, was murdered in 1282) I probably would be a monarchist. But as the Royals aren't Welsh in any way, and are seated on the throne via jumping through hoops so that legitimate Catholic heirs could be frozen out, I tend to be ambivalent at best...

Still, there is a sense of occasion, and if I were English, I probably would enter into the occasion a bit more.

There is something "nice" that an institution is hereditary, so that the politicians and media don't get their sticky hands on it, put their "place men" in it,  and twist it to their own ends (though perhaps I'm being simplistic and they already do!). Yet watching the people walking into the Abbey you get the feeling that this is the old 'school tie' brigade and so we have "celebs" there because they went to the same posh schools, or are married to minor royalty etc.

As the ceremony is taking place in the Abbey known to King St Edward the Confessor (and containing the shrine to the great English Royal Saint) I suppose part of me wishes that the royalty were more like him, devout, helping the poor (in a direct and anonymous way), striving for peace.

I do get a little annoyed when royalty surround themselves with rich chums, homosexual activists etc. As I was reading yesterday on the blogosphere, the royals have signed through laws promoting abortion and homosexuality, and these are the people who head the Church of England (no wonder its in a mess).

So, I don't know how best to feel about today. I'm not a Socialist and when the usual suspects moan and groan it smacks of whinging, jealousy and envy -- and I don't want to be like that; but I think if Prince William froze out a few of the politicians, jet set and homo-celebs and put a few of the homeless of London, polished and spruced up for the day, in their place, I might hold the royalty in higher repute.

As a commoner with no power, influence (or money!) I have about as much chance of sitting amidst the high and mighty as a ham sandwich getting into a bar mitzvah, so I'm sure my cogitations and deliberations count for nought in the grand scheme of things.

The Happy Couple?

Which would be the better: people born into obscene wealth and privilege, or place-men like Tony Blair living in Presidential opulence? I kind of get the feeling that we'd have more chance of one day getting a good, Christian leader who might make a stand for decency and traditional values through the former system than the latter. America has the Presidential system and look who they had in the hot seat: Bill Clinton! But then I guess they could at least impeach him...

So, I wish the happy couple well, with caveats.

As an afterthought, one of the little monkeys just walked in the room to see David and Samantha Cameron walking into the Abbey and said "that's just gay" - in that teenage put-down way. A moment later the camera homed in on Elton John and his wife David Furnish. You couldn't make that up!