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Here’s to You, Mrs.
800 years of Sassenach oppression are nothing to the tasty story of a 59 year-old woman and her 19 year old lover. Iris Robinson, the wife (at the moment) of Northern Ireland’s Prime Minister has gone into media purdah (viz psychiatric treatment) after a scandal surrounding her extra-marital adventures.
Apparently, she played away from home with a young lad who wanted to open a cafeteria and managed to get him £50,000 from property developers. He must make one hell of a beans on toast. So must his dad. She had a go on him too by all accounts.
All this has blotted the escutcheon of hubby Peter Robinson who represents the DUP – a loyalist party that espouses family values. The poor fella is being pressed to explain how much he knew. I’d have thought that if his Misses was indulging in extramural matress dancing, it was pretty bloody obvious that he didn’t know anything. Now, I have no sympathy whatsoever with this man’s politics, but give the guy a break! If you just found out that your one and only had been riding the baloney pony with a teenager, wouldn’t you think you deserved a wee bit of space to get your head together?
Samson and Delilah, Anthony and Cleopatra, Monica and Bill….sure, it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry. And I find it comforting that in spite of all the money and power, affairs (of the heart or wherever) can still make a politician declare ‘Alas! I am undone’. There, but for the grace of God, go more of us than we’d care to consider.
Predictions 2010
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From November 2002 to October 2009 I wrote weekly articles for the website www.weeklyletter.com and every Christmas I would make predictions about what the next twelve months had in store. I predicted, truly, the month and year of Pope John Paul II’s death, I predicted the name his successor would take and I predicted the assassination of Benzir Bhutto.
Here are my predictions for next year.
- The Queen of England will substantially curtail her public appearances after something, possible something very permanent, befalls her husband the Duke of Edinburgh. There will be talk of abdication but she will refuse.
- Manchester United will win the English Football Leage Championship and Chelsea will win the European Champions League.
- There will be a surprise General Election in England in late March and the ruling Labour party will win it but with a hung parliament.
- There will be an Irish presence at all the French games in the South African World Cup – which will be won by Spain after they beat England 3 -2 in the final.
- Penelope Cruz will marry Javier Bardem discreetly and something sad will happen to another famous Spanish actor.
- There will be a major development in battery technology that will rewrite the rules for laptops.
- Osama Bin Laden will be detained or killed by US soldiers in late April.
Let’s see.
Happy New Year.
…but I Did Not Shoot the Deputy
It was a long weekend where the Spanish who care about such things celebrate the Spanish Constitution. Spain is one of the most interesting countries in Europe when it comes to politics. It boasts a new democracy risen from a bloodless transition from fascist dictatorship engineered by a monarch who the leader of the Communist party admitted was the most radical agent of change at the time. The Spanish Congreso de Deputados – House of Commons if you will – is just up the road from the statue of Neptune and a stone’s throw from Madrid’s central Puerto del Sol. I went there on Monday.
I queued for four hours in the cold and the rain to get a look at the building where on 23th February1981 Antonio Tejero Molina tried to stage a military coup. You can see the bullet holes where he shot into the ornate ceiling. What a prat!
When we arrived at the entrance after joining the queue at Calle Alcalá and going all the way down to the Paseo del Prado and then up and around Calle Zorilla, they photocopied my passport and gave me a plastic cup (one of the cosy foamy ones) of soup. There were no guides. Just blue arrows with the word ‘Route’ on them. It was all very lush carpet and oil painty throughout. There was a fancy table given as a gift by some very important dead person to another very important dead person and a room with clocks. There was a modern looking tribute to the men who drew up the Constitution 40 years ago. The contrast between the modern paintings of these guys with the oil painted portraits of Pre-Franco times highlighted how young modern Spain is.
The debating chamber is beautiful to look at but uncomfortable to sit in. Little wonder they are so grumpy most of the time. Every diputado has an electrical voting system and a computer monitor. Although they look a bit Windows 3.1, they’re more on the ball than the Brits who have to shuffle out and in again to vote.
The debating chamber is a lot smaller than it looks on the 9 o’clock news and I can imagine the atmosphere gets a bit tense at times. In the English House of Commons MPs are separated by a space the distance of two sword lengths. Here they inhabit a classical semi-circle.
I was given a rucksack, gloves, scarf and a woolly hat when I left. I imagine that is so I can be identified as a solid citizen who has done the democractic Haj to the Congreso. I was also given a copy of the Spanish Constitution. I shall read it too.
