Observations from a Hill

An Oath of Allegiance on Coronation Day? Dear God, what are they trying to say? Words fail... while the world crumbles before them, the Royal Family Lite™, rather than accepting their naturally curtailed rôle as a much-depleted and maybe a more constitutional and functional unit; appear intent on clawing back some of their 'heritage' and status, and revisiting their former 'glory'. A bit sad, really, and a bit of an own goal, too: if they want to avoid a Republic, they would do well to avoid assumed fealty to a divine monarch as a concept: not a good twenty-first-century fit...

  So, another one of the great planks of the Tory Brexit 'plan' is to go by the wayside, to be dumped in favour of expediency, too difficult to implement. The EU retained laws dump is effectively being scrapped, leaving most of those EU laws in place, with only a relatively small number being removed from statute at any time soon. Of course, tellingly, those they are determined to bin involve product safety and emissions trade-offs: two areas that big business would naturally view as impediments to trade. What a coincidence: where there's a will, there's a way, eh? Typical. I'm going back to the snooker, wake me up when the government actually does anything other than posture and make cheap jibes about the opposition...

  Snooker's a funny old game: play it well enough these days, and you will make a fair bit of dosh out of it: and fair play - chwarae teg, as we say round here - at least such rewards are commensurate with the level of raw talent required to get to the top of the game's earning pile. Not quite so with the absurd remunerations demanded by the CEOs of this world, a breed of ridiculously self-entitled individuals such as we've never seen to date. Remember, these people are not the arse-out entrepreneurs of old, staking their entire lives and fortunes on some speculative and risky venture in order to build their fortunes, but rather the golden-parachuted-in-three-year-tenure temporary holders of entirely fictive job posts, looking to cash out with as much dough as possible for the least possible effort and move on to the next gravy train offered by the idiots who run this world. Give me snooker every time...

  A trip to Betws Y Coed today, with sandwiches and a pint in The Royal Oak Hotel for lunch. There's a comfortable, if bourgeois, atmosphere to the place, but it's a well-run and not expensive place to grab some well-prepared, if basic, food and while away a couple of hours over the papers in the lounge bar. We've taken to occasionally having Saturday lunch there with friends, in the restaurant, which is a pleasant, but I think reasonably well-earned, extravagance. We drove back through the mountains via a fairly circuitous route to give the family a grand tour of scenery that they had not seen, despite having been coming here for forty years on visits. A fine enough day for a Thursday. A fine enough day indeed.

Llanllechid, this afternoon: your humble author, wife Jane, and sister-in-law, Carol; in a hot tub with the Glyders and Chwarel Penrhyn in the background, as the setting sun toasted our faces, after a day out on Anglesey. Not our tub, but belonging to the holiday let that Carol, Kevin and Ma are renting this week. When we moved here, forty-three-years ago, any event such as this would have been utterly and fantastically inconceivable, on any number of fronts. The pubs were even closed on the Sabbath in those days, and large numbers of the parish's populace still regularly attended chapel three times on Sundays: what the chapel elders would have made of this is anyone's guess, but that would be their problem, and theirs alone: life moves on here in God's own parish...

Interesting counterplay between the two opponents, and I don't mean Ronnie O'Sullivan & Luca Brecel in the quarters of the World Snooker. I refer of course to the PM and the leader of the Opposition and their respective administrations. On the one hand, Sunak's government's Illegal Migration Bill including the power to detain under-18's - children in British law - travelling alone or with family; and the Labour Party removing the whip from Diane Abbott for some somewhat ill-conceived remarks on the nature of racism. On the one hand, the Tories continue to deploy their long-standing, vote-garnering [they hope] old standby, law'n'order: Draconian legislation to counter largely overstated or even non-existent threats. On the other, we see the Labour Party engaged in a non-too-subtle purge of the Left within the party, attempting to placate the centrists and to an extent out-manoeuvre the right-wing press. Both are understandable and simultaneously lazy thin...

  Just a diary post tonight, as we've had family down from Lancashire for supper with the boys, pooch and us; and I had my second migraine in two days earlier on: I definitely think I've picked up some virus which is messin' wit' me nervous system and encouraging it into minor anarchy. Still, Jane provided us with victuals of a high order, and all departed recently in good spirits, until the morrow. Pictured: the stove lit, fresh flowers on the rescued pedestal table [blog posts passim], and a living room left to the two of us, ready to watch the last episode of the rather compulsive version of Little Dorrit on UKTV Play...