King meets President... and the ladies who carry pocketbooks meet the lady who carries only herself.

The wind kicks up as the King steps forward and all the many ladies' hats threaten to undercut the extreme dignity. The First Lady waits until she's duly shaken hands with the King before she reaches up — at 16:57 — to steady her headgear.

Stick around until 18:35, and you won't be sorry, unless you hate horses, white horses, arrayed in fairy-tale style.

It's the King's very best carriage, lavishly festooned with gold leaf, the very frippery Trump's haters deplore in the Oval Office. Their slogan plays in my head: No Kings!

At 23:13, I get the answer to the question that's been puzzling me: How do they keep the horses from shitting? (They don't.)

I had thought there was no music, that somehow silence was the soundscape for the event, but at 24:07 I see musicians and notice faint music. Perhaps there was music all along and a telephoto lens on the camera is creating the illusion that it is much closer than it seems. The faint music informs us of our great distance from these illustrious characters.

At 25:00, the music is (or seems) louder. It's "The Star-Spangled Banner." A song about fighting the British. 

"A bothy is a basic shelter, usually left unlocked and available for anyone to use free of charge."

"It was also a term for basic accommodation, usually for gardeners or other workers on an estate. Bothies are found in remote mountainous areas of Scotland, Northern England, Ulster and Wales. They are particularly common in the Scottish Highlands, but related buildings can be found around the world...."

I'm reading the Wikipedia article "Bothy," after encountering this word, which I don't remember ever seeing before, in the London Times article "Have William and Kate fallen for ‘west coast bothy frenzy’?It’s never been more fashionable to hole up in the Scottish isles like the Waleses, says Victoria Brzezinski."

Ben Pentreath, head of the architectural and interior design studio of the same name, is widely reported to have assisted the Prince and Princess of Wales... has had a connection with the Scottish west coast since he was a teen.... In 2018 Pentreath and his gardener husband, Charlie McCormick, bought a teeny pair of buildings (a Victorian two-roomed cottage and a much earlier stone bothy) on a sea pink-covered estuary in the far west coast of Scotland. “It really does feel a long way away,” Pentreath says. “Bothies really can’t be more than one or two rooms. And I think we all find romance in living in small places — for a while!”

American/British royalty. Ours is better, right?

Happy Bday M8! London shows are off to a splendid start 🇬🇧🇺🇸🤝 @KensingtonRoyal pic.twitter.com/VlD6V0PiEL

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) June 22, 2024

"I had to say something/To strike him very weird/So I yelled out/'I like Fidel Castro and his beard'..."

Sings Bob Dylan in "Motorpsycho Nightmare." 

That was just my first thought on reading a headline this morning: "Prince Harry is upset his brother didn’t like his beard." 

That's a Guardian piece by Bridie Jabour. She muses about sibling strife within her own family, with her younger sister and then as a mother:

[H]aving my own children has only transported me right back to the intense outrage that dogged me whenever I perceived a sibling to be getting different treatment to me. Never mind that you have to treat your children differently, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Oh! As they say on Reddit: unexpected communism.  Embarking on this blog post, I wasn't expecting a double dose of unexpected communism.

"He set down the water, called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace..."

"... and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out."

Writes Prince Harry, quoted in "William is my ‘arch-nemesis’, says Harry in new book Spare" (London Times). 

Wales.

There's nothing wrong with William supporting England, he was born in England, he's English, it's right he supports them.

What's wrong is that he's been given the title Prince of Wales. https://t.co/CR32FWP8X8

— Julie Jones (@Ms_JulieJ) November 15, 2022

"Any suggestion that there isn’t gratitude for the institution, anything that could lead anyone in the public to think that senior members of the royal family aren’t grateful for their position, [William thinks] is really dangerous."

Said a source close to Prince William, quoted in "It wasn’t just the Queen: the whole royal family knifed Prince Andrew/After years of indecision, the Firm finally acted against the duke — and all his siblings were involved" (London Times).

Friends of Andrew say he has been doing “a lot of thinking and work on himself”.... There is much more thinking to be done as Andrew, who once described himself as “an ideas factory”, contemplates a permanent retirement devoid of flummery. Some in royal circles believe a safe option would be for him to run one of the Queen’s estates. Others, including the royal historian Hugo Vickers, think he should devote himself to a life of charitable rehabilitation.

“Prince Andrew needs to start up an animal sanctuary and work there, Profumo-style,” Vickers said. “The British love animals.”

Retirement devoid of flummery... "Flummery" is one of those words that gets my attention. Oddly enough, I have a tag for "flummery." I'm not sure how that happened. My favorite word is "flummox," as I've mentioned a few times on this blog. And yet I don't have a tag for "flummox," only for "flummery." It makes you wonder, what is flum? Is it like phlegm?

As I've discussed before — here — the OED calls the word "flummox" colloquial or vulgar and suggests it's onomatopoeic, "expressive of the notion of throwing down roughly and untidily." 

But what about "flummery"? That's not connected to "flummox." According to the OED, "flummery" originates as the name of a food — a "coagulation of wheatflour or oatmeal." From there, it got figurative: "Mere flattery or empty compliment; nonsense, humbug, empty trifling" or "Trifles, useless trappings or ornaments."

Yes, we don't need any of that from Andrew.

"Prince William, who joined crisis talks with his grandmother and father over the decision to remove Andrew from public life, agrees that the change should be permanent."

"'There is no way in the world he’s ever coming back, the family will never let it happen,' says a royal source. 'William is no fan of Uncle Andrew,' says a friend of the Duke of Cambridge. Another source close to William says that one of the 'triggers' that 'really gets him' about Andrew is his uncle’s perceived 'ungracious and ungrateful' attitude towards his position, which William considers 'a risk' and 'threat to the family.'... One of Andrew’s problems is that he is not very popular. Mention his name in royal circles and courtiers roll their eyes. As one former aide explains: 'He’s not made any friends on the way up, so no one is helping him on the way down.' One Whitehall source describes him as 'a self-important bore.' A military source who has dealt with Andrew on several engagements does not mince words: 'I’ve got no time for Andrew. He’s a total dickhead, an arrogant shit.'"

From "William sees Prince Andrew as a ‘threat’ to the royal family/The royals never want the Duke of York to return to public life, insiders say — as one source reveals: 'William is no fan of uncle Andrew.'" (London Times).

"It wasn't as good as it should have been."

And your next Bingo callers are…#ThankYouCareWorkers pic.twitter.com/iz7XWI1oku

— The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) May 21, 2020

"I got about half way through this and realized I have absolutely no interest in these Instagram accounts, or the mystery — whatever it is."

That's the second-highest-rated comment on the really long NYT article, "A Royal Instagram Mystery/Two royal couples, two Instagram accounts, one conspiracy theory."

The highest-rated comment is:

I know I'm alone in my thinking but having a "brand" and putting your entire life on Instagram (owned by Facebook) strikes me as quite tawdry, especially when you exploit your children in the process. Whether a Royal or a Hollywood star, the shamelessness, the egomaniacal way famous people present themselves in order to self promote and make money is sickening. Whatever happened to mystery, decorum, privacy, and discretion? I do not go on Instagram and never will. It also seems so hypocritical that Meghan left England because she did not want to be the focus of the British press but she is doing all she can to become as famous as possible. You can't seek fame and then complain about the scrutiny you might receive.

"ABC News anchor Amy Robach was caught on camera slamming her own network for allegedly sitting on the Jeffrey Epstein story three years ago...."

"Robach says she’d spoken to Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges Epstein used her as a sex slave and trafficked her to his powerful friends, including Britain’s Prince Andrew. 'I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts .. we would not put it on the air,' Robach says on camera. 'First of all, I was told "Who’s Jeffrey Epstein?"... Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways.' She went on to say the network was afraid that running the story would prevent interviews with Kate Middleton and and Prince William. 'It was unbelievable what we had. [Bill] Clinton—we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail and now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations.'"

The Daily Beast reports on the newly released video you can watch below. Amy Robach is the journalist who got Hunter Biden to cry (in that long interview last month).

BREAKING: @abcnews anchor @arobach caught on 'hot mic' in August disgustedly exposing networks decision to strategically spike bombshell investigation into Jefferey Esptein over THREE YEARS AGO.

Says what she had was "unbelievable" #EpsteinCoverup: https://t.co/HagfLpwKDn pic.twitter.com/fPvJc3JCCQ

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 5, 2019

"I hope you understand that we're puppets"/"You said we had free will"/"No, I didn't."

"Congratulations & best wishes to the Earl & Countess of Strathearn."

Tweeted the Scottish prime minister, Alex Salmond, using the Scottish titles for Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton), who've just announced the expected birth of their second child. Salmond is in the process of campaigning for Scotland's independence.