Where are they now?

I referred to the planet Zog in an earlier post. That made me think about King Zog of Albania, of whom I was aware as a child. He died in exile in France in 1961. European countries have been ambivalent about having exiled monarchs in their territories; Zog fled Albania in 1939 and went first to Greece then Turkey. Onwards via difficult wartime routes ending up in France. When Germany invaded he fled to England, where he lived for five years before going to Egypt then settling in France.

Poor chap, you think. But he took with him a huge chunk of the Albanian treasury's cash, so maybe not so poor.

So we know where he is now. Probably not in Heaven.

If memory serves me correctly, we Brits have a penchant for hosting failed foreign leaders, especially those having connections with our royal family, i.e. pretty much all of the world's monarchs and ex monarchs. So I thought I would investigate whether there are still any of these lovely people living in our welcoming country.

I know, you are imagining your intrepid investigator traipsing through the streets of Chelsea, Mayfair and the like, knocking on doors and asking is "King xxxxx in residence?". In normal times this would undoubtedly have happened but I feared that turning up wearing a mask might evoke a less than pacifist response, so instead I turned to Mr Google for help.

I started with King Constantine of Greece, because I remember him. He fled a military coup in 1973. Lived in Hampstead until 2013, when he returned to Greece. First cousin once removed of the Duke of Edinburgh. Second cousin of the Prince of Wales (and presumably his brothers and sister; who cares?), second cousin once removed to Prince William (and presumably to that one who lives in California and various others of that generation|). So, connected. He and his wide live in Porto Cheli in the Peloponnese, a nice resort with access to a private airport. It's a hard life being an ex-King.

Mir Suleman Dawood Jan is the 35th Khan of Kalat. Kalat is in Balochistan in Pakistan. This chap is currently living in Cardiff, allegedly in a three bedroom semi. Far away from the glitz of the Ritz [Ed: are you writing poetry now Nigel?]. Perhaps because he has no known connection to Her Maj. "Sure you can come live here but it will have to be in Wales. Don't worry, they have people there; you could join a male voice choir if you are bored."

National Grandparents Day

The problem with blogging about annual events such as National Grandparents Day is: how do you avoid repetition?

This year it's today, October 3rd. Last year was October 4th. We are getting younger. Or perhaps ageing more slowly. I believe it's always on the first Sunday in October. The same as the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, the premier European horse race, the peak of the flat racing season. At Longchamp today. 3:05 BST.

Anyway, here's what my grandkids can do for me today:

• read your grandfather's blog
• comment on some posts in your grandfather's blog (you have a choice of 303)
• check out your grandfather's Twitter feed @usedtobecroque1 and send me a tweet
• post links to your grandfather's blog on your TikTok accounts
• wear a @usedtobecroque1 T shirt
• make a "I love my Grandpa" web site
• take your mum and dad breakfast in bed

Not much to ask really; I'm always asking my grandchildren for birthday and Christmas lists so I thought I'd preempt their requests for today. Just in case.

October 3rd is also National Boyfriend Day in the USA. I don't have one of those - unless I take Tony as a boy and a friend - so I'll stick with checking my blog for grandson comments. Expect there will probably be none.😭

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker

Remember when the most respected people in your village were the schoolteacher, the bank manager, the doctor and the vicar?

Of course you don't. Those days are long gone.

Unless. You need to get a passport. In which case, you will need to find a person of repute, and who has by some means a knowledge of you, to countersign the form (Why is it "countersign"? Don't they just sign?).

The government tells us the person must work in (or be retired from) a 'recognised profession' or be ‘a person of good standing in their community’.

Recognised professions include:

• chiropodists but not osteopaths
• airline pilots but not bus drivers
• dentists but not doctors (unless you are a close friend)
• engineers but not scientists
• travel agents but not estate agents
• publicans but not restauranteurs
• journalists but not bloggers
• opticians but not audiologists
• MPs but not mayors

Does any of this make any sense whatsoever? Has anyone looked at this recently?

Also included: "president or secretary of a recognised organisation". I was for a number of years Secretary of Cornwall Croquet Club so, if you need a countersignatory for your passport application, I'm your man. Payment in bitcoin only.

The Queen's Remembrancer

Master Barbara Fontaine is in fact a mistress. A female Master. As the Queen's Remembrancer, it's her job to review for the monarch the annual plans for new trees in the Forest of Dean. With me so far?

The post was created in 1154 by King Henry II and the first King's Remembrancer was Richard of Ilchester, a senior servant of the Crown and later Bishop of Winchester. The position is nowadays held by the Senior Master of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court. A Master is a level of judge in the High Court whose decisions are of equal standing to that of a High Court judge at first instance. At first instance? Not sure what that means.

You'll be pleased to know that the Trial of the Pyx is a ceremony dating from 1249, formerly held in the Exchequer Court, now in Goldsmiths' Hall. The Queen's Remembrancer swears in a jury of 26 Goldsmiths who then count, weigh and otherwise measure a sample of 88,000 gold coins produced by the Royal Mint. Don't know what a Pyx is? Don't worry; like the Schleswig-Holstein Question, there are only three people who do.

Given these exotic responsibilities, Babs must regard her involvement with Prince Andrew as tawdry, degrading and unworthy of her attention.

My non UK readers will surely be thinking "what strange people those Brits are".

Tagalog

Botham - we'll call him that rather than Sir Ian or, more recently, Lord Botham - has been appointed the UK's trade envoy to Australia. If anything is designed to get up the noses of the Aussies, it's shoving Botham down their throats. How this will influence the prospects of a free trade deal, who knows?

Trade envoys are parliamentarians - yes people, Botham is a member of our revered Upper House - appointed, unpaid, by the Prime Minister of the day. There are currently 36 trade envoys covering 76 countries/regions. Most of them - in fact, all of them other than Botham - are people you've never heard of. One imagines that they have some connection with, or experience of, their target territories. Richard Graham, MP for Gloucester, for instance, speaks Indonesian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, French, Malay and Swahili; so a decent enough fit as trade envoy to the ASEAN Economic Community of Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. Not sure where they speak Tagalog; could it be a fictional language like Dothraki or Klingon? Nope, it's a Filipino language. I picked it up quite quickly:

The trade envoy programme only began in 2012. It's aims are to "support the drive for economic growth by building on the UK’s existing relations with these markets and maximising bilateral trade, thereby generating real and long term benefits for the UK." It's fair to assume there will be more trade envoys appointed in due course. If they follow the example of sending a cricketer to the country that he battered into submission with his determination, we might see the following:

Geoff Hurst (hat-trick in the World Cup Final victory over West Germany 1966) as envoy to Germany.

Andy Murray (beat Novak Djokovic to win Wimbledon singles final 2013) as envoy to Serbia.

Trina Gulliver (beat Francis Hoenselaar to win the darts world championships in 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007) as envoy to The Netherlands.

Laura Davies (US Women's Open Golf champion 1987, beating Ayako Okamoto and JoAnne Carner) as envoy to Japan and the USA.

Stand by your phones, people!

Self-identifying

According to the Office of National Statistics in a report published on Monday, white people born in the UK in the period covered: 2011-2014 had a lower life expectancy than all other ethnic groups. Black African women, for instance, had a life expectancy of 88.9 years; for Asian (other: excluding Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) men the figure was 84.5 years. For white women life expectancy was 83.1 years, for men 79.7 years. You can download the data here.

Which leads me to wonder whether, in this post-binary world, I could identify as a black African woman and live for an extra nine years. And what would I do with those years?

Three questions:

1. Are there cultural reasons which I have ignored? Probably.

2. Am I trivialising a number of issues in an offensive way? I hope not, but maybe.

3. Why am I blogging only 164 words when there is so much else to write about? You're right, I could just have tweeted.

Surveillance

I am being surveilled. Monitored, snooped on. Sitting next to my TV in my lounge, staring defiantly at me, is a small video camera. Given to me as a present by my son. "You're getting old, Dad, and I want to make sure you're OK". What kind of son gives his dad a surveillance device as a birthday present? Whatever happened to socks, a Guns N' Roses T shirt, a copy of the Jeremy Corbyn Annual?

OK, I get it. And I voluntarily gave my son the password to access the device in cases where he hasn't heard from me for ... a week, maybe. Using the app, it just shows live pictures of my massage chair, with or without me on it. It's not exactly a foolproof system, as I might be on the loo, in bed, doing some gardening or cooking. To be sure, I would need one of the little devices in every room in the house - surveillance gone mad. However, it's something. I trust my son not to watch my every movement, although on Friday nights, when he might come home the worse for wear after an evening with mates in the pub, I give it a wave - and sometimes other signals - every now and again. And I generally make sure that, if engaged in some undesirable 'old man' activity - scratching my armpits, picking my nose, strangling the neighbour's cat or reading the Guardian - I do it in the camera's blind spot (have you found that yet, son?)

Which brings me to Matt Hancock. Does he have a son who has given him one of these devices? If the picture of our esteemed Secretary of State for Health in a meeting with one of his 'closest advisers', in his office, was taken from the office CCTV, why on earth would anyone have CCTV in their office? Is this a government thing; do they all have CCTV? Everyone knows that CCTV can be hacked so it doesn't sound like a great idea. And, if so, did Hancock know he was being watched? What a fecking eejut. First rule of being surveilled: find the blind spot.

I believe this is the system which the civil service had installed in the Prime Minster's office:

Note to Hancock's kids: you can get one of these neat little devices on Amazon for about £20; when's his birthday?

It might be too late by the time this is published.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

I'm unsure what I think about attempts to re-engineer the past. Statues, such as those of Cecil Rhodes. I wonder whether Rhodes would have been a fan of The Clash.

... if you want me off your back
Well, come on and let me know
Should I stay or should I go?

I generally approach these apparently binary issues with a touch of cynicism. I doubt they are simple matters. In the case of Rhodes, it may boil down to what a statue is for. Things change; the culture of a nation changes, as do the values of humankind. Statues don't; they are either there or not (ask Saddam Hussein). Perhaps statues should be temporary, with a limited lifespan. He's no longer interesting; let's put her up instead for the next year or so. Made of some cheap material to facilitate that. Or holograms, with a coded time limit; you wake up one morning and discover that David Lloyd George is no longer in Parliament Square Garden. "Oh, we switched him off; his time was up; Madonna will be there next week."

I know virtually nothing about Cecil Rhodes so am unwilling to venture an opinion of his suitability for deification in concrete. I can consider the arguments on both sides: leaving the statue standing is a necessary reminder of how we, the British, condoned genocide vs removing the statue means we no longer share those imperial values and should not appear to celebrate them. Both arguments seem to me flimsy, sounding a bit Orwellian. I suppose I think statues coagulate the past and I am much more interested in the future.

I rather think Rhodes would have echoed The Clash:

If I go there will be trouble
And if I stay it will be double
So ya gotta let me know
Should I stay or should I go?

@diaristpepys turns 100

In an idle moment I began wondering about historical figures and how they would use the Internet if alive today. It seemed a suitable subject for my 100th blog post.

Exhibit A: Samuel Pepys

• Pepys would definitely have a Facebook page; he wanted to be a member of the establishment and this would be his way of publicising his activities and making Friends
• LinkedIn - Pepys' LinkedIn page says "Naval Administrator has contacts and contracts for negotiation"
• Tinder - a must for Pepys' social activity
• WhatsApp contacts include Oliver Cromwell, Charles I, Charles II and James II.

Exhibit B: Jane Austen

• Jane would obviously have been a blogger: bloggerjane.blogspot.com
• Selling her novels through Amazon Kindle. Book 1 free, book 2 £2.99, book 3 £7.99, now you're hooked it's £14.99 from now on
• Jane's LinkedIn page says "superior librettist seeking comic opera composer for collaboration"
• She set up a WhatsApp group with her sister, brothers and assorted Hampshire country folk

Exhibit C: Leonardo Da Vinci

• Leo started with Instagram, obviously. A new picture every day
• YouTube channel of Leo building massive Lego structures
• LinkedIn: "painter (not houses), sculptor, engineer, inventor, theoretical physicist, mathematician, writer, locksmith, pilot, balloonist, driver, draftsman, interior designer. Available for...well, anything really; I can do a great job for you"

Exhibit D: Caligula

• Definitely a Twitter candidate. "Senators are fat, lazy dangerous lefties. VOTE THEM OUT!!!!" "German Governor conspiracy! Mainstream media won't report it, of course. Neues Deutschland spokesman for the socialists". "I'm gonna build a wall. A big one. The biggest ever built. To keep the peasants out".

Exhibit E: Henry VIII

• Facebook page: 1.5 million Protestant followers; 2 Catholics (Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his mum)
• Twitter: "Be afraid, be very afraid, Charley boy"
• Tinder: "looking for a wife. Short term temporary post"

Exhibit F: Mao Zedong

• TikTok: pictures of a Long March
• WeChat group with Qin Shi Huang, Kublai Khan and Sun Yat-sen
• Facebook page sponsored by HuaWei
• Twitter: "We're gonna build a wall around Taiwan. A big wall. The biggest ever. To keep the Taiwanese virus out."

So, 100 blog posts! When Geoffrey Boycott reached a century, he took a fresh guard ready for the next 100. So that's what I'll do.