The Royal Knee

Should a blog dedicated to absurdity, amongst other matters, dwell on a subject as serious as the length of  the Duchess of Cambridge's skirt?

The issue is clearly of some importance and concern to the Queen, as press comments in recent months have revealed and now revived. Some have even toyed with the almost treasonable thought that the young royal's dress sense errs more towards the WAG than the WAP (easy to work that one out ...).

However, as the Queen knows from her long experience, knees have a role to play in a royal setting only when they are being bent in respect. Elsewhere they have no place. She is right to be concerned. The human knee is not an aesthetic object; it is a highly complicated articulation with various knobs and dimples, which does not even suggest beauty or elegance. For that very reason, one royal knee is never to be hung over the other, a posture which only emphasises its knobbliness when exposed.

Models on the catwalk and film stars on the red carpet, dressed from head to lower thigh in highly expensive gear, simply fail to realise the sheer awkwardness of their knees as they lurch along or stand in homage for the cameras, apparently oblivious to their peculiar lumpiness for which there is no cure except to cover up.

So on this I have to side with the Queen. Lower the hemline, Kate, and spare your knees' blushes.

CJM
March 2012

A Christmas Story

As a child, I used to go carol singing in our neighbourhood, mainly to raise a little pocket money for Christmas. With a choir-trained voice, I had the advantage of being able to sing, and my efforts were usually rewarded.

            Now on this particularly bitter cold night, I was singing away when the house door opened and a very old man and lady peered out. “That was lovely,” they both said, and invited me in.

            Nowadays, of course, such an offer to a child would be impossible. A SWAT team would be surrounding the house and breaking the door down within minutes. Even then, as all children know from the Brothers Grimm tales, an old lady is most likely to be a witch who puts you in a cage to fatten you up.

            None of these fears was lost on me, but I was extremely cold and the old couple seemed harmless enough.

            They led me into a warm and cosy sitting-room, and offered  me a comfortable armchair close to an open fire. What a relief it was to feel the warmth in my limbs.

            “You must be very cold,” said the old couple. “How about a little glass of ginger wine to warm you up?”

Hey, I was twelve years old, and had never touched anything stronger than orangeade. Where was that SWAT team?

            Ginger wine? Ginger beer? What’s the difference, I innocently thought, and said yes, of course. In moments it was served on a tray with a plate of small cakes. Looking back, I now see it as bearing every resemblance to a glass of absinthe, the green devil. Little did I know what was waiting for me.

            ”A fig roll?”

Fig roll, figgy pudding, Christmas pudding. What could be nicer? “Thank you.”

            It was only then that I noticed the parrot, perched in an alcove on my right hand side. It was huge, bright green, and, more to the point, dangerously free to wander. Which it suddenly began to do, edging its way closer and closer to me with a rather nasty gleam in its unpleasantly close eyes.

            “Drink up your wine!”

I smiled nervously, lifted the glass to my lips and took a sip. A terrible searing sensation filled my mouth and my throat. I knew I was going to die. It was clear that the inventor of ginger wine for his own tortured reasons must have set out to design a drink that would kill off the human race, or at the very least destroy its taste buds.

            The parrot had now hopped on to the back of my chair, and was horribly close to the back of my head. It began probing around my neck with a beak that was enormous, grotesque and highly menacing.

            “Have a fig roll. They’re very nice.”

How could I trust these people now? But there was no way out. Into my mouth went a bite of the fig roll. It was dry, bitter and disgusting. I choked on it. Even the parrot wasn’t tempted. It was more interested in my ear lobe.

            I must have shown signs of panic. “Oh, don’t worry about him. He wouldn’t hurt a flea.” How often in life do we hear that just before the dog bites you! Then, “Oh, it’s the first time he’s done that,” as if it was somehow your fault.

            Now imagine the effect of all this on an impressionable child — a situation which would take the diplomatic skills of the Foreign Office to extract oneself from politely. It seemed I was doomed to die, either of ginger wine poisoning, fig roll inhalation or bleeding to death from a parrot bite.

 I don’t really remember how I got out of there. Presumably the ginger wine made me so daring that I stuffed the fig roll into the parrot’s maw, rendering it harmless, and fled to the door. I recall the echoing cry, “Do come again!” as I stumbled away to safety.

            Children nowadays will never have this kind of adventure. Maybe in my second childhood, though, there’ll be nothing to stop me from keeping up the old customs and go carol singing. But, if I come knocking on your door, no ginger wine, no fig roll. And above all, please, please, lock up your parrot!

CJM

A shocking headline

After my rapturous comments on the Barcelona team win the other day, I must pin my colours to the mast. I'm a Roger Federer fan and have never in my life anguished or triumphed with any other sportsman/woman in quite the same way.

So you can imagine my horror to see the recent newspaper headline: Is the Mighty Fed in Decline? I quickly scanned the article, and was relieved to find that it had nothing to do with the Supreme Sportsman. It was about the slipping of power away from the US Federal Reserve Bank, obliged for the first time in this difficult world to explain its actions to the American public.

CJM

On a lighter note

Recalling the famous statistician's experience at the dinner table, reminds me of the Principal's wife who faithfully attended all her husband's duty dinners and made conversation with a wide range of experts on all subjects. However she had a slight tendency to malapropisms, along with enough sense of humour to confess her lapses.


On one occasion, being told by her neighbour that he was an orthodontist, she apparently spent the rest of the meal asking him questions about birds, which the poor man was at a complete loss to reply to.

CJM