Irrelevant Sprogs and Important Dogs.

I should think it’s probably a well known fact that the British Royal Family got a new addition to its already well-inflated ranks yesterday, so I suppose it should have come as no surprise that today’s front pages of the tabloid press would be plastered with pictures of a naked mole rat tightly swathed in a white blanket. Indeed, I wasn’t surprised. Neither was I generally surprised at the inane headlines which accompanied them, since inane headlines are the tabloids' stock-in-trade. What did surprise me was one headline in particular. It accompanied a picture in which the naked mole rat’s front paws were sticking over the top of the tight white blanket, and the headline ran:

HIS FIRST ROYAL WAVE!

Well, we all know that one of the major functions of the tabloid press, second only to fostering bigotry, is to hideously sensationalise Establishment trivia in order to keep the less gifted among the population safely anaesthetised. This is so they won’t notice the serious shortcomings evident among those running the Establishment, and is why said tabloids are so good at writing inane headlines. However, however… Even I didn’t think a tabloid would be capable of digging the pit of inanity to quite such a depth. Seems they were.

And do you know what’s ironic? The British monarchy has been of the constitutional variety for over four hundred years. In simple terms, that means they’re little more than a comfort blanket which the British like to hug and suck every so often. That’s nice, but that’s all.

We’re living in difficult economic times in which the road western economies have been taking for the past few decades is being seen to be a dangerously unstable one. It seems to me that economic growth has to be a finite concept, and that raises two distinct possibilities with regard to the time when the current sprog is ready to take his place among the line of constitutional monarchs:

1) The constitutional monarchy might have been demolished by then, since it’s a very expensive comfort blanket.

2) Global economies might have collapsed, and we’ll be back to a culture in which tribal warlords will be ruling the roost.

*  *  *

And now the sensible-and-nice news:

I made the acquaintance of a lively young Labrador in Ashbourne today. Her humans even offered me custody for half an hour, but unfortunately they were only joking. They were just having difficulty eating their alfresco lunch of saveloy and chips in peace.

And there’s another point: If Inca the Local Cocker Spaniel were pregnant, I’d be very interested. But the Queen’s granddaughter-in-law? Nah.

(And just in case anybody wants to know, the writing of the new short story went well last night. With any luck, the first draft should be finished tonight, and then the work of making it readable will begin.)