It’s a Rotten Job, But Someone Has To Do It
They’ve just had a lady called Ella Slack on the television. She is the official stand-in for the Queen at rehearsals, so that broadcasters can set up their cameras correctly. Apparently, she got the job because she was the right height and worked for BBC Outside Broadcasts at the time. There’s more here in the Telegraph.
However, she’s never met the Queen.
I wonder if Her Majesty was watching the broadcast!
What Is The Collective Noun for Dames?
The Royal Academy has recently had a party for the Queen to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, where they invited a large collection of Dames of the British Empire and other important women from the arts and the media. Here‘s Dame Joan Bakewell‘s account of the evening.
So what is the collective noun for dames?
For dames of a certain sort, it could be a pantomine, but that would have been unfair to those, who turned out in their finery for the Queen.
So perhaps it could be a finery or an elegance of dames?
Burke’s Peerage suggest dameage and then say it is ugly. Which it is!
You could mangle the lyrics from the song and make it a not-like-a of dames. Ugly again!
So I think I’ll go for an elegance of dames, in deference to the ladies, who went to the Royal Academy.
The Queen Is Not Amused
She might be, as I have no special access. But who would wear this jumper.
A Ghastly Jumper
Not any woman I know!
Everybody Wants a Corgi
And not just any corgi, but a Pembrokeshire, like the Queen.
This is a statistic from the Kennel Club and it’s probably all down to the Diamond Jubilee.
Congratulations Your Majesty
I’ve only seem it on one bus on route 21, so it might be unique.
Congratulations Your Majesty
Although, I have seen it several times, before I got this picture at Newington Green. In some ways to photograph it there is appropriate, as that is the area of London, where the non-comformists based themselves in the seventeenth century. It has a long connection with Mary Wollstonecraft. It is a place well worth a visit, as it has a nice garden and some buildings worth a look.
The Flags Are Up In Oxford Street
Because of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, Oxford Street has put up the flags, as these pictures show.
At the launch they even had some corgies there.
Wot No Fountains!
It is always reckoned that if you want it to rain on your event, you ask the Queen, as she is renowned for bringing the rain.
But the current drought has even stopped the fountains in Trafalgar Square, as this article in the Telegraph outlines. Here’s two pictures I took today.
The visitors don’t seem too bothered. The Queen’s bad luck doesn’t seem to be having any effect. It will of course bucket down at the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics
The Queen Gets Light-Hearted
I don’t know whether it’s because of the Jubilee, but the Queen seems to be treating life much more light-heartedly. A couple of weeks ago she went to the theatre and sat with the plebs in the Circle, rather than the Royal Box. And then yesterday after a clash of venues in Manchester, she turned up to wish a couple getting married good luck. That is reported here. I don’t think Queen Victoria would have done that on her Diamond Jubilee.
The First of the Many
Is this Queen’s Jubilee tea towel, the first to be washed in a laundry?
A Freshly-Washed Queen's Jubilee Tea Towel
I took the picture yesterday, when I paid for my sheets to be washed.
The Anonymous Widower 