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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author confesses that even a Sunday – that most ostensibly tranquil of days – cannot be trusted to deliver repose. For the news arrives not with the gentle chime of a church bell but with the breathless urgency of a footman who has already lost his wig. One monarch’s triumphs, one comedian’s misfortunes, and an aviation crisis of frankly theatrical proportions: let the record show that this particular Sunday has been anything but restful.
His Majesty the King has returned from what the Palace is calling, with admirable understatement, a “high stakes” moment. His speech before the assembled legislators of the American Colonies – urging support for democratic values, for Ukraine, and for Nato – earned the monarch no fewer than twelve standing ovations. Twelve! This Author has attended theatrical productions that would weep with envy. A senior royal aide informs us that the speech reflected the King’s personal “conscience” and sense of “truth” – qualities one notes are in somewhat shorter supply in the American Colonies at present. As for the chemistry between His Majesty and Lord Trump? The aide reports “an awful lot of warmth and laughter” in the Oval Office – which, given the bilateral tensions over the Kingdom’s refusal to join the Persian war, suggests either remarkable diplomacy or truly exceptional manners.
Nor did His Majesty proceed directly home, as lesser mortals might. Oh no. The final chapter of his tour saw him depart to Bermuda, where he visited a new observatory on Cooper’s Island and launched the rather marvellously named Project Nova – a £40 million endeavour to install a network of telescopes across five sites to track debris in space. Old satellites. Discarded rocket stages. This Author cannot help but observe that tracking the wreckage hurtling uselessly through the heavens seems, on reflection, a very apt metaphor for certain political careers closer to home. The King was duly waved off at the airport by dignitaries, a guard of honour, and – one imagines – a tremendous sense of a job exceedingly well done.
From celestial ambitions to rather more earthly anxieties. The government has unveiled contingency plans permitting airlines to cancel flights weeks in advance – without surrendering their precious take-off and landing slots – should jet fuel shortages bite this summer. The culprit, Gentle Reader, is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a consequence of the Persian war, which has disrupted supplies from the Middle East. Since the Kingdom imports approximately sixty-five percent of its jet fuel, the arithmetic is, shall we say, uncomfortable. The proposal would allow carriers to merge flights, shuffle passengers between departures, and generally perform the logistical equivalent of fitting ten people into a carriage designed for six. The International Energy Agency warns Europe faces shortages by June. One trusts the passengers of Manchester, bound for the Greek island of Skiathos, will receive this intelligence with the serene acceptance for which the British travelling public is so internationally renowned.
And now, Gentle Reader, to a tale that caused This Author to set down her tea cup with considerable force. Peter Kay – that most beloved purveyor of northern wit – was some forty-five minutes into his performance in Birmingham on Friday evening when the venue was evacuated following a report of a suspicious bag. The comedian was, we are told, rushed from the stage. A nineteen-year-old gentleman of Washwood Heath, one Omar Majed, has since been charged with false communications and is to appear before magistrates on Monday. Police searched the premises and found precisely nothing suspicious. The shows are part of Mr Kay‘s “Better Late Than Never” tour, with all profits destined for twelve cancer charities. That someone should disrupt an evening of charitable laughter with a hoax of this nature is, in this Author’s view, not merely criminal but deeply, comprehensively witless. One hopes the magistrates share the sentiment.
Finally, and on a note of genuine admiration, This Author draws attention to one Mac Speake, aged eighty-four, who last Sunday completed his forty-fifth – and final – London Marathon, having run every single edition since the inaugural event in 1981. He is one of six gentlemen constituting what is known as the Ever Presents, a club into which no new member may ever be admitted, and from which none have ever wished to depart. His personal best stands at two hours and forty-four minutes, achieved in 1983. His most recent effort took nine hours and fourteen minutes, his wife and daughter very nearly carrying him across the line the year before. This Author, who considers a brisk walk to the milliner’s an achievement, regards this with something approaching reverence. There are crowns earned in ceremony, Gentle Reader, and there are crowns earned one cobblestone at a time. Mac Speake’s is emphatically the latter sort.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.