Plus a Paddington Bear hamper, an ancient tree and a house with a terrifying price tag — it's Friday's Dawn Chorus.
The truth about life at Buckingham Palace
‘’I’m sometimes asked if the Queen did informality like “normal” people, and the answer to that is yes,’ writes Mike Tindall in a new book, The Good, The Bad and The Rugby, which is — if I’m being honest — a book I’ll almost certainly not get around to reading, based on a podcast that is, regrettably, quite a way down my list right now. It’s one of those times when, love them or loathe them, you have to doff your cap to the Daily Mail for poring through the whole lot to get to the interesting bits about Her Late Majesty. ‘Zara and I would often watch the racing with her on TV, as I’m sure lots of people reading this have done with their gran,’ writes Mike. ‘Her life wasn’t like an episode of Downton Abbey, with meals on long tables and everyone dressed in their finery every night.’
It’s a picture of royal domestic life which is simultaneously inspiring, charming and — it must be said — mildly disappointing, since we can think of so many better stories which might have emerged instead. ‘The Queen insisted on wearing her crown to breakfast every day,’ would have been a corker, for example. Or how about ‘There’s a bowling alley at Buckingham Palace, and Prince Philip was obsessed with trying to get a strike using the Sovereign’s Orb as a ball.’ The door is surely ajar for Mike to write a barnstorming follow-up.
Family fun: Queen Elizabeth II with Zara and Mike Tindall at Buckingham Palace in 2006. (Photo by POOL/ Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images)
Quiz of the Day
1) Which is Britain’s largest bird of prey — a bird so big that it’s nicknamed the ‘flying barn door’?
2) Which medieval English king was the son of an empress?
3) The word muscle derives from the Latin name for which pest?
4) Which is the world’s northernmost capital city?
5) Who sat on a tuffet?
Answers down below
It’s a very bread-and-soup time of year
When the nights draw in, the clouds gather and the central heating has come on, we always go back to Melanie Johnson’s three-cheese sourdough bread, plus perfect winter-warmer soup to go with it.
Please look after this bear (by feeding him goodies from Fortnum & Mason)
An incoming film seems always generates buzz, so it’s not surprising that there is a lot of Paddington Bear news around at the moment. Earlier this week fiction’s second favourite bear (for nobody will ever top pre-Disney Winnie-the-Pooh) was awarded a British passport, and now Paddington and the Brown family have the ideal way to celebrate with a slap-up tea: The Paddington In Peru Limited Edition Hamper, available from November 1 from Fortnum & Mason.
At £185 it’s more than you might ordinary spend on a tea party for a young bear, but given that the Browns own a townhouse in Maida Hill which would probably cost £4 million in real life, we reckon they can probably afford it. And if you can’t? Fortnums will also be offering Paddington mugs, tea towels, boxes of chocolates and more.
Fortnum’s Paddington Hamper — and yes, it does include marmalade.
That old chestnut
This sweet chestnut tree in the Cotswolds pre-dates the Norman Conquest. And that is amazing — read all about it, and other chestnuts.
The ‘Tortworth Chestnut’. Credit: Alamy
A few words to make you smile
‘The hundreds, perhaps thousands of things that gladden our hearts every day — listening to the rain, being greeted by the dog, sitting in the garden with a cup of tea, eating a piece of buttered toast, gossiping — are underrated by modern ideology, which places value on the rare, the exotic, the unique and the expensive,’ writes Jonathan Self in this week’s Spectator column in Country Life. ‘More needs to be made of the little things in life that please and delight.’
And finally… the one-bedroom wreck that fetched £2m million
Proof of the old adage ‘location, location, location’. And it’s even worse inside.
That’s all for today — we’re back on Monday
Quiz answers
1) The white-tailed eagle, aka the sea eagle, which has an 8ft wingspan when fully grown
2) Henry II, who was the son of Empress Matilda of the Holy Roman Empire
3) Mouse (mus in Latin)
4) Reykjavik, in Iceland
5) Little Miss Muffet
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