Let me take a moment out of your busy day to try and persuade you to sympathise with an unpopular cause. We could call it "Freedom Under Charles, King" until I can decide on a suitable acronym.
Firstly I should let you into a secret. Prince Charles and I were born within 48 hours and 20 miles of each other and have both celebrated a significant birthday this week. I've kept an eye on him throughout my life for regular comparisons from my first recollections of his presence on the savings stamps my Scottish Grannie used to post down for my birthdays. One of us should be (but isn't) retiring this week and the other is still hanging around waiting to actually start a proper day job.
Now I have to admit that I'm fighting an uphill battle trying to evince sympathy for Chazza as the conventional wisdom could be summarised as follows:
1. He's a fruitcake who talks to his plants and has an equerry to squeeze his toothpaste for him.
2. He married the most perfect fairytale princess in the World but kept up his relationship with a woman who looked like a horse.
3. He'll never come up to the fabulous unflinching Royal Duty that his wonderful Mother has shown over the last 66 years.
Well, I think he's just a fairly ordinary chap who's life has been sent down extraordinary paths. Since his investiture in 1969 he's been groomed and prepared for a job that didn't materialise and that's bound to cause ridiculous levels of pressure on the psyche. We've all (come on, admit it!) been in jobs where we've had to pretend to be busy when there wasn't enough work to be done, but Charles has spent his whole life doing only that under the spotlight of intense media scrutiny. He is criticised for objecting to modern architecture and criticised when he builds a toy-town film set in the West Country. Criticised when he lives off the State and criticised when he tries to turn an honest bob flogging biscuits at 12 quid a tin. The poor chap cannot win.
I feel quite sorry for Prince Charles and rather hope that his miserable old mum sees sense and toddles off to take a few Viking River Cruises as a retiree and gives her firstborn a crack at proper monarchy. It's the least he deserves.
Here's a few uncanny comparisons on two parallel lives which have turned out so differently:
16 comments:
I assume you'll be donating your pension to a suitable charity. Protection for Royal Idiots who Can't be King, perhaps?
How good do you look in a skirt, though?
Tim1: I would specify that it was the "spare" section.
Tim2: It depends on the angle.
Funnily enough I've never seen you and Bonnie Prince Charlie in the same room together. Those pictures show an uncanny likeness. Is there something you want to tell us?
Nota: Could have been a mix-up at the North Kent Nursing Home. I winder if "canny" is the opposite of "uncanny"?
Ah...well.
I raise a glass for your continuing-work ethic and I apologise for not working hard enough to enable you to take off to warmer climes for half the year.
Sorry.
As for the Royal Spoilt Brat...yeah, I could feel sorry for him reaching retirement age before he ever started work...but he's already paying someone else to hand him the box of tissues.
You're never 65!
Do you think I may meet Queenie on my cruise then?
I think Charles has done much good work but marrying a young impressionable girl when you love someone else takes a lot of forgiving IMO.
There always seems to be an assumption that he can't wait to be king, but I can't see it myself. Even more constraints than he already has, every time he smiled he'd be assumed to be gloating over his mother's death, it's a ceremonial role only with no actual powers and a lot of obligations. Oh, and Happy Birthday, Rog.
Rather agree with Z. I think he's probably a goodish, well intentioned chap, who's always done (a) what he's told, and (b) the best he can in the circs.
P.s. Which reminds me the concluding stanza (?) in a pome, by a chap called Edgar :-
And, because of that great Magna Charter,
that was signed in the great days of old,
that we here in England can do what we like...............
just so long as we do what we're told.
Rosemarie: Thanks for your thoughts. I can't take off for warmer climes anyway as Lily & Holly have put their foot down about both travel and kennels.
Pat: Come on Pat - we've ALL done that! Thanks for thinking I'm not 65 though...
Z: "ceremonial role only with no actual powers and a lot of obligations" - don't you sometimes feel like that as a School Governor on bad days? (only joking ;-))
Mike: I think your pome sums up English society better than a million surveys!
I feel like that on good days too, Rog, and I'm not joking at all.
bwhahahahahaha I just fell off my chair - such similarities ;)
And you both had a Scottish granny!!
Uncanny! Happy birthday Rog!
And you both had a Scottish granny!!
Uncanny! Happy birthday Rog!
Is that a pipe in picture 4? And I don't mean a bagpipe.
And why is there a child in picture 6 who looks like she's just been kidnapped by the local Bob from the Likely Lads look-a-likey?
Post a Comment