Friday 23 September 2016

Go on, spoil yourself


I have just been listening to a bunch of overtly ambitious people yapping on about how they started the Tate Modern using public funding and ignoring gifts from people like Charles Saatchi. If they were covertly ambitious, they would have joined the Foreign Office to get their knighthoods.

Getting a knighthood for feathering one's own nest must be the icing on the cake. They talk as if they removed the huge, rusting turbines with their own bare hands, whereas they probably didn't even point at it. They employ other people to do the pointing while they attend fund-raising dinner-parties and get pissed on champagne.

H.I. went to college with half of them, and she says that their driving ambition was evident even in those early days of the 1960s. This country is avery strange (starnge) place, because we have the time-honoured tradition of instinctively cutting down any tall poppies we happen across whilst walking down the path of life, but at the same time, if someone spends their whole life clammering for attention and getting themselves on every board or committee they can, we acknowledge their sickening behaviour with an award for a lifetime's acheivement.

In the U.S. successful people are publicly applauded, but here in the U.K. there is always some miserable misanthrope like me on hand to put them down.

Now I am going to use an old Trelawnyd trick to gain audience participation:

What do YOU deserve a knighthood for?

28 comments:

  1. You deserve one Tom because, and I know you do not like praise so I am always very careful, but this post gives me the opportunity to do so today, you are very good in your profession; a conscientious and very hard worker.
    Please don't hate me for writing this, I had to build up the courage to write it ;)
    Greetings Maria x

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    1. How could I hate you for writing that? Even though I am not as hard-working as you might think! X

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  2. Is there a female equivalent of a knighthood?

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    1. Yes. If your husband gets knighted, you are called Lady Jennifer, but no - other than that you have to be a Dame, and there is nothing like a Dame. Nothing in the world.

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  3. Replies
    1. In the old days, you would have been burned at the stake.

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  4. My late father-in-law was a British Diplomat, and I can assure you that gongs were distributed in lieu of a decent salary.

    p.s. I don't deserve anything.

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  5. For Friendly Florence I think they might want to lock me in the Tower. It's about Princess Anne's bloodthirsty dog - the one that famously nailed the Queen's favourite corgi. It happened long ago when everyone hate Camilla and loved the memory of Diana. Said verse was inspired by the newspaper headline that went something like QUEEN SAYS CAMILLA AND FLORENCE ARE NOT TO BE INVITED FOR CHRISTMAS. I shall not trouble to mention my poem about Charles visit to the Galapagos. I don't expect a card when I'm 100.

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    1. Just reread the Galapagos poem, still there after all these years (2008) and noticed in the Comments section that Dominic Rivron has nobly nominated me for the post of Poet Anti_Laureate. That's a great honour. It'll do me nicely. Thank you very much.

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    2. Have you finally lost all grip on the real wolrd?

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  6. Won't happen. I've looked at photos of Princess Kate curtsying to the queen, and know that could never be me. Even that platform in your picture is out of the question. But, I would qualify for staying up late at night to retrieve grandchildren from playing in the marching band at away football games.

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  7. Not likely to happen unless I change sex, but as for a Damehood - no thanks, sounds too much like a Pantomime character to me.

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  8. For unpaid work for the welsh tourist board

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    1. Oh, so it is you who decided that both bridges should be Get Out Of Wales Free portals?

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  9. Just a lifetime of little things. I hope they made a difference once or twice.

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    1. Services to Little Things What Made A Difference Once Or Twice?

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  10. Well since you ask, I deserve The Order of the Garter for Galantry. I lent my wooly jumper to a barmaid tonight.

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  11. 'I lent my wooly jumper to a barmaid tonight'
    Is that a euphemism?

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    1. I wish. I have requested her not to wash it before return, though.

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