We need to get a couple of sheep to bring the jungle which was our garden, and it’s a large garden, under control. It’s either sheep (we’re told we have to have at least two) or an Albanian. Maybe we could hire or borrow a couple from one of the local shepherds. Having gone into the why’s and wherefores though it would appear the Albanian has won. In the long run he will turn out to be cheaper than the sheep! Talking of sheep, not being well I missed out this Easter on the festivities with our neighbours. Didn’t in fact leave the house and was rather surprised to learn this year it was too cold for al fresco. The weather has been very strange. Torrential rain once more, hail, thunder storms and still chilly as we move into May.

Courtesy of the letter pages in The Athens News I’ve been having a little ding-dong with a vegetarian gentleman on the mainland. I don’t now why I bothered to start it. If I remember it was because veggies are constantly telling us all about the superiority both health and morality-wise of their diet but carnivores never seem to answer back. Well, I got what I asked for. His response to my first letter wasn’t exactly vitriolic but his second one certainly was. The first statement this time though was so ridiculously illogical that, after a delicious chicken dinner, I have decided to call it a day. Nuff said. I would think the readers of The Athens News would get very bored with it anyway. Did you know there are some veggies who won’t even take honey? There is weird as the Welsh might say.

Talking of letters The Daily Mail, that most right wing of right wing conservative newspapers has published a letter I never ever thought could possibly appear in its illustrious if somewhat biased pages, and this in their wedding souvenir special in which readers are informed the paper has bought all the horseshoes used in the wedding parade and they can apply for one. I tell you, it gets more and more daft. Actually forget the illustrious bit; the pages get cheesier each day. The letter could have appeared in The Guardian in which all bias tends towards the left.

I don’t know what the copyright laws are regarding newspaper articles etc., but as my copyright is continually being broken without compensation I’ll take a chance on it. After all they wouldn’t get much if they decided to sue. It would be more bother than it’s worth. After a leader which states “A day to celebrate a very modern couple” the letter is as follows:

STOP THE WEDDING! YOU CAN’T BREED THOROUGHBREDS USING CARTHORSES.

I wonder how many people, like me, had a sinking feeling when Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement. Let us get this out of the way first. Catherine Middleton is a pretty, well educated and personable young woman who would make a good wife to someone – just not to a future king of England.

This is nothing whatever to do with snobbery. It is to do with the institution of monarchy which is, and always has been, based on bloodline and DNA.

The Plantagenet, Tudor and Stuart bloodlines of our royals are mixed with Germanic families of the highest rank – brought in through George l and Prince Albert. King George the sixth’s marriage to the Queen Mother introduced Scottish ancestors, while Princess Diana brought the blood of her ancestor Charles ll back into the Royal Family. Sneer if you will but this is what the monarchy is all about. Coal miners and butchers all follow admirable callings but as King Charles l said “a subject and a sovereign are clean different things.”

Having the Middleton DNA of humble miners and domestic servants brought into the royal line is preposterous for you cannot breed thoroughbreds by introducing carthorses. Left-wingers may foam at the mouth but if you want a monarchy to survive and be respected you must follow the rules.

On the other hand in the late sixteen hundreds when a woman’s place in the world was simply to marry, hopefully bringing with her a large dowry and breeding as many kids in as short a time as possible as most of them would die off, a man by the name of Gerrard Winstanley wrote this – “Every man and woman shall have the free liberty to marry whom they love, if they can obtain the love and liking of whom they would marry, and neither birth nor portion should hinder the match.”