WOODEN SPOON FOR THE MEN

By Charlotte Hofton - Friday, March 28, 2008

Amy Willcock is organising a marmalade competition.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
I AM pleased to report that Amy Willcock, who behaved so naughtily last year, using such words as “timewarp” and “bitchfest” to describe the Women’s Institute hierarchy, seems to have reformed.
She has organised a marmalade competition, to be held in Yarmouth on St George’s Day.
Well done, Amy. Now, what categories have you devised? Seville Orange is good, as are Citrus and Savoury Marmalade. Clergy-Made Marmalade is also fine, especially as it may be won by a nice lady vicar, with those charming dangly earrings they all favour.
But what’s this? Man-Made Marmalade?
Tsk, tsk, Amy! You’re at it again, aren’t you? You’ll put on a coquettish little skirt, and lean across your Aga, and get the men to stir that sticky marmalade with their wooden spoons, and the next thing we know you’ll be licking your fingers, and — well, let’s just hope the WI hierarchy are doing something else that day.

TIME ROYALS STOPPED TRYING TO BE 'RELEVANT'
IT USED to be that royalty and their entourage were merely a bit bonkers in an upper-class sort of way, while not inconveniencing any hoi polloi.
Then they started to imagine they would be more “relevant” if they did things ordinary people do, and the rot set in.
The trouble is, they just don’t get it quite right. It began with that excruciating TV show, It’s A Royal Knockout, unanimously agreed to be a public relations disaster.
This was later followed by Prince Edward’s television company, Ardent Productions, described by one successful production executive as “a sad joke in the industry” and crashing from one debacle to the next, including a badly misjudged intrusion into Prince William’s privacy at university.
Now Prince Charles has opened a shop, tastefully stocked with such items as £17.95 towel holders and £45 trowel and fork sets with hand-carved ash handles. Not much chance of being “relevant” to ordinary folk there, then.
This enterprise smacks of Marie Antoinette. The profits may be going to charity but only somebody fool enough (and, frankly, immoral enough) to squander £45 on a trowel and fork is likely to bask in the reflected glory of the Prince’s largesse.
The rest of us will be in the supermarket, increasingly reaping opprobrium from those who can afford to pay huge prices for everyday objects.
Where next with these cock-eyed attempts to engage with the public? Princess Anne, thankfully, is still shaking hands and making speeches but who knows? If she becomes a traffic warden, then it’s definitely all up with royalty.

WHERE THIS SAD LOSS WILL BE FELT THE MOST
THE death of Anthony Minghella has brought a flood of tributes in the media, all acknowledging his professional brilliance.
The Island, additionally, has a very special claim to him, with many remembering his lifetime’s support for his birthplace.
And that is as it should be. The death of a man such as he is rightly commemorated in accounts of his achievements.
But his real legacy was not his professional life, nor even his commitment to the Island. If Anthony had lived and done no more work, ultimately it would not have mattered.
And that is because, like any good person, the most important thing about him was his love of those closest to him.
His greatest achievement was to be a son, husband, brother, and father, and it is within his family that the loss of Anthony Minghella matters above all else.

WOODEN SPOON FOR THE MEN

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