Watching telly at the palace

I couldn’t help wondering while walking past Buckingham Place yesterday evening what ’er indoors was up to. They must rattle around a bit in there. It’s getting tatty in the hallway, quite noticeable when you go through the front door although it would be rude to mention it. But I think I read somewhere that they are going to spend a bit of money doing the place up. It’s high time. It’s got a bit fusty over the years.

You get used to a place though don’t you, and it’s so disruptive having the decorators in. I went there a few years back for a dinner. The Duke of Edinburgh was host. He appeared from behind a screen. Apparently this is the usual form of Royal entrance when they ask you round for a bite to eat. They leave the same way quite deftly before you know what’s happened. There’s no waving you off on the doorstep.

I could imagine the Queen with her feet up watching Coronation Street in another room, giving the thumbs up to her old man as he went to do the night shift.

“Ta’ra luv, don’t be too late.”

“I won’t be luv, I’m fair blethered me’self. See you in a bit.”

I wonder if she wears curlers. I expect she has to if she wants to maintain that classic hairdo. So she’d be sitting there in her curlers with her glass of port and lemon and a copy of the Racing Post on a side table, feet encased in sheepskin-trimmed slippers, a dorgi on her lap.

At least she won’t have to entertain the condescending remarks that many people her age have to deal with if they find themselves in an old folks’ home.

In a home I expect the helpers would want to be on first name terms like they are with the others. “Hello Betty love, how are we today? All right are we? I’ve just brought your tablets. Can I get you a cup o’ tea? My, that’s a nice frock you’re wearing. How about a piece of Battenberg? No love, Battenberg, not Saxe-Coberg.”

As the Queen, however, she doesn’t have to suffer the usual old folk treatment, and because she doesn’t, she can get on with being head of state uninterrupted by those who presume a degree of senility in the elderly.

But then 80-something isn’t so elderly any more. Even 100 wasn’t seen as much in the Queen Mother who went on tottering in her high heeled shoes right up to the end.

I like to think that out of the spotlight, the Queen and Prince Philip “knock along” together quite amiably. All I know of their domestic arrangement is that they keep their corn flakes in a Tupperware box. This deliciously ordinary detail was revealed a few years back by a Daily Mirror journalist posing as a footman. “Shock horror exclusive, Queen has cornflakes in Tupperware,” said the headline, or something like that.

There was something endearing about that. It strikes me that anyone who keeps their cornflakes in a Tupperware box cannot have been too intoxicated by power and affluence. Like a hallway, Tupperwear gets a bit tatty with age. But I bet they would go on using the same old box forever, just as we hang on to the same old tea caddy year after year.

I tell a lie. In fact we threw out a faithful tea caddy of long standing just a little while back. It was a Queen’s Silver Jubilee souvenir tea caddy. I’m not suggesting there was anything symbolic about this. It was just old.

We have a Prince of Wales tea caddy now; nothing subliminally symbolic about that either. It’s just what we have. It will never be the stuff of headlines. Not like the marmalade on the Royal slice of bread.

Animal eugenics

Selective breeding has been going on for years: horses, cattle, sheep, pigs. All have been bred by people either for the table, transport, clothing or sport. We breed our pets too, sometimes in to the strangest shapes and sizes. As the world's biggest dog show, Crufts, convenes in Birmingham, some are questioning the ethics of breeding animals for the accumulation of rosettes.

We have a West Highland white terrier. He's a lovely dog - big on "aaaw" factor - but he does have skin problems associated with his breed. Having lived without a dog and living with one now, I couldn't imagine life without one again. I sometimes think, however, that pedigree dogs are bred to keep the vets in business. I do think that dog breeding and dog showing - nothing less than animal eugenics, after all - needs to be reformed. Beverley Cuddy, editor of Dogs Today magazine, has outlined a powerful argument here.

I wonder what the Kennel Club would make of the Queens dogs? She calls them "dorgies" because they are half corgi and half dachshund. As the link points out, they're catching on in some places as a recognised cross breed.