“Clouds, the memories,
From which the rain fell”
From the Joostajoo of Jesterji by Bachchoo

Two current British notions annoy me. The first concerns royalty and the second horse meat.
Last week Queen Elizabeth II succumbed to an attack of gastroenteritis. This is an unpleasant affliction and must have been at the age of 86 acutely painful. The Queen was hospitalised for a day or two and has now been declared fit and well and returned to her palaces and offices. Her illness was, in Britain and in Australia, headline news for days.
The royal family and their relatives are the subjects of insatiable curiosity among the tribal British and the predominantly Anglo-Saxon descended Australians. Every centimetre of circumferential expansion of Kate’s, the Duchess of Cambridge’s, tummy which is at present carrying the future heir to the British throne is photographed and copiously commented upon. Every twitch of her sister Pippa’s backside is recorded and reproduced with commentary as it has become the most famous bum in Britain. I have seen pictures, well clothed but revealing of shape, of this vaunted anatomical marvel and find it rather unremarkable. One can’t say one has seen better — as ultimately the appeal of sitting-apparatuses is a subjective and, I would venture, instinctive thing.
Nevertheless, every move of the royals is news and the news and debate took a serious turn when at the end of January Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands unexpectedly announced her abdication in favour of her son, Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange. The prince is 45 and the Queen opined in her valedictory speech that he was ready to assume the throne. The abdication gave rise to speculation about Queen Elizabeth II doing the same and handing over to Prince Charles, now in his 60s and showing it.
The Queen gave no indication of doing any such thing and commentators speculated that she didn’t trust Prince Charles to take over the duties of a monarch, that Elizabeth thought her son was not up to the job.
The resignation of Pope Benedict at the end of February renewed the debate. Here was a Pope who treated his position and power not as a privilege but as a duty and said he resigned because of it. Some Italian newspapers hinted otherwise. The Pope, they said, had resigned because he was forced out by a secret cabal of homosexual and corrupt church grandees.
In Britain, his abdication on the grounds of being too feeble to do the job was again quoted when considering the Queen’s bout of ill health. One influential commentator said that he had put his republicanism aside and felt “very sorry for the old girl” as she struggled on, feeling that her duty to the nation compelled her to. The comments about Prince Charles’ inadequacies again came to the fore.
In my view Prince Charles, though soft on organic foods, classical architecture and a subscriber to some distinctly unscientific convictions, is as well equipped as any of his predecessors to carry the responsibilities of being a British monarch. Britain abolished its monarchy when it chopped off Charles Stuart’s head. It then reverted to establishing a royalty, the head of which was a presence without very much to do beyond ceremonial signings and appearances.
The prattle about the Queen being sceptical about her son’s abilities is nonsense. Does anyone believe that she thinks she will outlive him? Much more likely that she knows that one day she will die and the Prince of Wales will become Charles III. About his suitability she can then do nothing.
His qualities as a monarch, riding in coaches and waving, walking in procession down the aisle of Westminster Abbey, signing the documents a Prime Minister thrusts before him or placing suitably blunted swords on the shoulders of undeserving crooks and bankers while granting them knighthoods, can then be assessed.
I doubt if the nation will find him lacking.
So to my second grouse. There is a continuing panic in Britain about horse meat having been mixed in to the ready meals that millions buy from British supermarkets. Most of the supermarkets have had their burgers, spaghetti Bolognese, mince pies, beef stroganoff and other such dishes traditionally made out of minced beef examined for “contamination” with horse meat. Equine DNA has been traced in several of these products and the supermarkets, such as Tesco, have taken the offending products off their shelves and are now running million-pound publicity campaigns to assure the public that they have taken decisive steps to ensure that any product labelled 100 per cent beef is actually that and, what’s more, beef that has been sourced solely from Britain.
This is necessary because most of the investigators who have detected the contamination in beef products have traced the supply of minced horse back to imports from Romania via Ireland and other European intermediaries. The British public, as is their right and custom, object to eating certain animals. They won’t eat horses. They ride them, they race them, they bet on them, they make them draw carts and ploughs and perform ceremonials; they send them off to the knackers’ yard to be killed, chopped up and turned into glue — but they won’t eat them.
Eating conventions differ from country to country. Horse steak is served in France and in Poland. (I’ve eaten in both countries!) In North Korea, the nation is armed and the dogs are nervous! In India we eat buffalo and call it “beef” and eat goat and call it “mutton”. To each his own.
The British though believe that this surreptitious introduction of horse meat into their diet is a recent and now avoidable phenomenon. A moment’s reflection makes it obvious that what’s new is not the horse meat but the means of testing its DNA and therefore the detection of its presence. For all the unwitting British public know, they have been merrily buying and eating horse meat mixtures for decades without the means of exposing it as a scandal.