Discover Rendall!!!......Corgis….
by Bernie Bell - 09:46 on 18 September 2022
Discover Rendall!
‘The Orkney News’ featured an item about a new book about Rendall… https://theorkneynews.scot/2022/09/17/discovering-rendall/
Though we’ve lived here for 16 years it looks like there are things and places of interest that we’re unaware of. So we’ve ordered the book, and will proceed to further explore our own parish!
https://www.orcadian.co.uk/shop/orkney-guidebooks-maps/1357-rendall-an-undiscovered-parish.html
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Corgis…..
I caught a bit of the news - I’m not watching the news at the moment – there is absolutely no point in doing so. I’d turned the telly on, and just before ’Heartbeat’ I caught a bit of the news and there was a woman from the British Corgi Association or some such organization talking about….Corgis. She was saying that there has been an upsurge in interest in Corgis among young people recently (?!) and more interest in them generally, too. And I thought – ‘This is the news - prime time early evening news. Consider all that is happening in the world and in Britain today, and an item deemed to be worthy of being on the news is ….the popularity of Corgis’.
Nothing against Corgis – they’re mostly an amiable breed of dog – it’s the actions of people I’m wondering at - as usual.
It then occurred to me that this could lead to people acquiring Corgis then finding that they didn’t want them/couldn’t look after them, and the rescue centres would end up full of Corgis.
Mike observed that unscrupulous people might steal Corgis to supply the demand. This could prove difficult as most pedigree dogs are Micro-chipped these days and are relatively easy to trace. That might not stop the thieves as a quick buck, is a quick buck.
As with much of British Society today, this hearkens back to Victorian England when stealing and ‘ransoming’ wealthy people’s dogs was part of criminal life…..
https://medium.com/truly-adventurous/the-dognapping-of-the-century-8169f538f295
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jan/29/ukcrime.theobserver
And then there’s puppy farming – this might not be so significant as, taking into consideration the gestation period of dogs, and that pups should be at least 8 weeks old before they leave their mother – by then the focus might have moved on to Charlie.
Does Charlie have a dog? I’ve never been aware of a dog being mentioned as playing a part in his life. If he did have a dog, I see him as a Spaniel kind of person. Geddit?
“I am his highness’s dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?” as Alexander Pope wrote in the 1730s and had engraved on the collar of a puppy which he gave to Frederick, Prince of Wales. Creep.
Charlie might break with tradition and get an Iguana – then lots of people would get Iguanas – then find that they are really complicated to look after – then hand them over to the already stretched rescue centres – if they’re lucky. https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/03/15/something-different-near-tingwall/
To quote Joe Brown And The Bruvvers …”What a crazy world we’re living in.”
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I really should make more effort not to ‘catch’ the news. The next evening re. the queue to see – not the Queen – but a box in which she may or may not by lying - Schrödinger’s Queen – there have been complaints that the queue wasn’t properly organized and one woman was saying that there….”should have been an on-line booking system” I looked across at Mike to check that he’d heard it too. “There should have been an on-line booking system.” It’s not a Beyonce concert! It’s a queue, which folk choose to join and to stay in, or not, to see a coffin on a plinth.
To celebrate his birthday, the diarist Samuel Pepys took his wife and other family members to see the tombs in Westminster Abbey. He describes how he ‘paid his respects’ to the skeletal remains of Queen Katherine de Valois, consort of Henry V - who was long dead - by kissing her on the mouth. He writes…”This was my birthday, thirty-six years old, that I did first kiss a Queen.”
A whole other level of ‘respect for royalty’ creepiness.
There’s something about Royalty that makes people lose their senses.
He presumably also had to queue to be able to actually see the remains of the past-on monarch, but maybe not for as long as folk are queuing now. There were less people then and it was harder to travel long distances - and no telly to drum up hysteria about suitable expressions of ‘grief.’
Tomorrow, as far as I can tell, we’re all supposed to spend the day standing stock-still with our heads bowed in ‘grief’.
Well, Mike and I won’t be doing that. Weather permitting, we’ll go for a walk and celebrate LIFE.
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Here’s one I made earlier….. https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/07/05/poetry-corner-what-our-garden-is-saying-to-the-sky/
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