Royal Baby

So the Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to her brand new royal sprog and the whole world would appear to have gone totally doolally. Pardon me for being a party pooper but I really cannot see what all the fuss is about. By the time the poor little bugger is likely to be crowned king the world would most likely have ended anyway. (See Attenborough). The Daily Mail kow-towing with the best of them has of course published a “Royal Baby Souvenir Special,” filled with pages of all the guff their journalists can come up with. One headline reads “487 million take to Twitter to share in the baby frenzy” and frenzy is obviously the most apt word for it. The child’s horoscope has been cast by Jonathan Cainer and bets are being taken on as to what its name is going to be. It seems James was the two to one favourite but lost out to George, so he will be the seventh of that name. Evidently Kate is not only the Duchess of Cambridge but her full title is Her Royal Highness Princess William, Duchess of Cambridge, Countess of Strathearn, Baroness Carrickfergus and the question I would like to ask is this; as she is a commoner how come she is suddenly Her Royal Highness when this accolade was repeatedly denied the Duchess of Windsor?

So on to David Attenborough. I know have flogged this a number of times I know but I am pleased that someone who can speak with the voice of authority has made his belief public. According to him, and these are his words, “humans are a plague on the Earth that need to be controlled by limiting population growth.”

The television presenter said that humans are threatening their own existence and that of other species by using up the world’s resources.

He said the only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth.

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” he told the Radio Times.

Sir David has spoken out before about the “frightening explosion in human numbers” and the need for investment in sex education and other voluntary means of limiting population in developing countries.

“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there; they can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.”

And, while on the subject of food, I do wish parents would teach their kids some table manners. Nothing is more off-putting at dinner than to see a wide-open chomping mouth full of masticated squishy food. Well don’t look I hear you say, but if it’s directly in your eyeline sometimes you can’t help it. At dinner the other evening our table was next to one occupied by a Scandinavian family. Despite not speaking Norwegian, Swedish or Danish, we presumed they were Scandinavian by the little bit of dialogue we overheard which was definitely herbe-nerbe. (“Hobnob” in English. You say herbe-nerbe with a rising inflexion at the end.) Anyway, the family consisted of grandparents (smokers), parents (non-smokers) and three boys, all so blonde their hair was virtually snow white. The two younger ones sat with their backs to us but the eldest, fourteen or so I would say, sat opposite and at first I thought he had a deformed mouth until I realized it was surrounded by tsatstiki. If you don’t know what that is it’s grated cucumber and garlic in yoghurt. He was slapping it on bread, opening his mouth as wide as it would go, taking far too big a bite and consequently having to chew with his mouth open. You would have thought food was going out of existence on the spot. I learnt to eat with closed mouth at boarding school when I was eight years old. Eating with an open mouth was derisively called alligateing and you were quickly brought to heel if seen doing it. People in the West eat far too much anyway. Greeks have gargantuan appetites and the herbe-nerbes could match them as more and more dishes arrived at their table. When I was in America I could hardly believe the amount of food consumed. It’s no wonder obesity is such a problem. Half the world eats and gets fat, half the world starves, that’s the way it goes.