Of Simpson and Stupid Kings

I've updated this by accident.

Still no idea how.

A problem that has worried me for a while is on the verge of being sorted; my own work is still thudding like a heavy cake, and perhaps I am a little wistful of R and A hanging out at Download while I stay here, look after cats and keep the house on tip top clean alert. But the truth is, last year was my turn, and having done one Download I know it's wasted on me. I am not so keen on the music as to forgive the rubbish organisation, and I'm just not fond enough of Jim Beam to be a real roots and rock chick.

So here I am darting from thing to thing...and found this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvWCcz2MAwo
The music's out of period of course, but I can see the sumptuousness of Madonna's vision. Oh the dialogue! If a prince met me at a party and began talking about husbands keeping me warm, I'd tell him to shut up and concentrate on his dancing.

The clip turned up at an appropriate time, when I found myself in a conversation (sort of) in which Wallis Simpson was referred to as a harlot. Mystery really; such folk let their kings and princes get away with everything from cruelty to incompetence, but if they can find a sneerword for a woman, they'll use it copiously, especially if it it can be linked to her sexual activity. Having said that, there has often been public sympathy for badly treated princess-wives, from Catherine of Aragon to Lady Di... But mistresses have to tread carefully and be very beautiful to get off the hook. Lily Langtry managed it by fading out with no trouble. The people could bear a harlot if she stayed one; it was when she was legitimised by matrimony they truly despised her.

I tried to watch The King's Speech again, and had to stop, George VI and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons coming across as two awful, awful people. The whole premise should have made for compulsive viewing, but I get impatient fast. Stuttering is awful, but by god, if you cannot do the job you spend your life preparing for, while taking scads of money based on the off-chance that you may be needed one day, just give it up and stay in the Navy. Even Colin Firth couldn't rescue this. I saw the part where Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons complains that Wallis calls her 'Cookie.' Lots of people called her that because it was thought that she resembled a handsome French chef her mother had once employed. She was not of royal descent, and our royals have always been bitches. Still, once she married the king, she out-royaled and out-bitched the lot of them, and never forgave Wallis Simpson for forcing her husband to do the job he was paid for.

As for Wallis? I remember seeing some documentary in which a fusty and possibly wine-fuddled old court dog was wheeled out, and spoke of how rumour had it that Wallis had 'learned some tricks' in the East which enchanted Poor David. It really does sound as though she introduced the Royal Court of Windsor to the art of fellatio. After Prince Albert's Prince Albert one would have expected the aristocracy to be a little more blasé about such things.

I never got the impression that she was an idiot, unfortunate, as she bagged herself one of the most colossally stupid men in the Western hemisphere. To be stuck for the rest of her life with some half-intellect ever grateful for his orgasms! I hope she loved him. What a fate if she didn't!