12th September
From the news this morning I have discovered that the Queen’s coffin was made 30 years ago, of English oak, is lined with lead, has clips on the lid to stop the royal regalia from falling off, requires eight soldiers to carry it due to its weight, and is ‘probably too expensive to make nowadays’.
That last part made me laugh.
Too expensive for royalty?
Nonsense.
I’ll remember that when Charles pops off.
Friends travelled to Edinburgh to see the procession with the ‘too expensive’ coffin from Holyrood Palace to St Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile, and to think I was there only two weeks ago.
They asked me to go along, but gardening is gardening.
They said it was very difficult trying to ‘get a good view’ due to the immense crowds, but were happy that they were nowhere near the ‘heckler’. A twenty-two year old man had expressed a view, loudly, very loudly, ‘Andrew, you’re a sick old man’, as the cortege passed by.
He was grabbed by members of the crowd and then a policeman and wrestled to the ground.
Whilst I think that behaviour was pretty poor, you have to ‘admire’ someone who will stand amongst the wolves and express an opinion (that many were probably thinking) that is pretty much at odds with the occasion.
That was pretty brave, especially when he fobbed the policeman off and said, ‘Get off, I’ve done nothing wrong’.
Would an Edinburgh matron (is there such a thing these days) from Morningside have been arrested in such a fashion? Are there matrons in Morningside or is it full of rich Russians?
Some of the papers highlighted, although not too strongly, some examples of the public who had been arrested (and then de-arrested in one case; how can you de-arrest someone; and if you can de-arrest someone it’s a pity you can’t un-shoot or un-kill someone. A Metropolitan Police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man recently.)
A chip shop owner in Aberdeenshire had to have some form of police protection after she posted a video of herself with a bottle of champagne and a poster proclaiming ‘Lizard Liz is Dead’. Seven police officers headed out to the chippy after the windows were bricked (so that’s seven more police officers than any of the rest of us could expect to attend a crime scene).
The procession up the Royal Mile did look good on the news.
I went to the Vauxhall garage and checked out the green electric Mokka. I would get eleven thousand for my current car, with an extra twenty three thousand to find. The car did 200 miles on one charge. And, more importantly and a real deal breaker, it was only available in black. I decided not to. Lack of car charging points put me off; I’d need to get a charging point installed in the garage (currently anywhere between 700 and 1600 pounds from Halfords). I’ll wait a few years; 2030 sees the banning of all new petrol cars, and I could be dead by then.
Petrol is down to one sixty one a litre from a high of one ninety nine point nine (Sainsbury’s) a few weeks ago.
The Ukrainians have taken back a substantial part of their land (not sure what substantial means) and Russian soldiers have been running away (I could imagine the ‘Edinburgh heckler’ shouting at them as they departed).
One Pagers 