needmoremeat
15 Jun 2005, 22:23
[Parts in square brackets are my commentaries]
June 15, 2005
But darling, how frightful it is even to consider leaving Berkshire
By Lydie Hisserton-Lopley
(aka Lydia Hislop of The Times and the BBC)
IT IS a truth universally acknowledged by anyone who is anyone that Royal Ascot is rubbish this year. Literally nobody went yesterday [but she and the Queen did?! :wtf: ] and it will be the same today. After all, who wants to trek up to Yorkhamptonshire [geographically incorrect!] to see one’s friends when one can just ask for the car to be brought round and drive to the end of the road?
Really, it was so inconsiderate of Ascot to move the royal meeting to the North. It serves them right that now they’re reaping the hurricane. They should have listened to us when we told them it would be a disaster. We knew it would be, just as one knows without having to read his books that Philip Pullman is corrupting our children. One only needs pick up a newspaper to be quite certain.
The scariest thing was the decision to relax the entry rules for the Royal Enclosure. Usually, two members have to vouchsafe that you’re a blood relative of terribly social people on both their mother’s and father’s side, or that you have an account at Coutts. It’s important to know that when someone vomits on your Balenciaga that they or their parents can afford the dry-cleaning bill. Or that it’s Rigby & Peller, not M&S, on show when a girl is sloshed, face down in the flowerbed.
Etiquette will go to the dogs as a result. Friends who boarded at Ampleforth — apparently it’s near the North — tried going to the races once. The poor things said Yorksteadians seem most interested in those smelly brown animals haring past and at intervals are even liable to break off conversation to applaud one of those brightly coloured short people. Quite what all the excitement is about is beyond me.
Obviously, some effort was made to retain some vestige of exclusivity at the royal meeting. The absurd notion that one should be able to buy a bottle of champagne for less than £25 has been condemned to northern folklore, where it surely belongs. Ascot’s caterers taught those yokels a thing or two: reassuringly, the Lanson and Moët cost more than twice as much as it did there last month.
(By the way, it’s all very well paying a proper price for champers, but when northern hotels try to rip one off by trying to charge almost as much as a B&B in Sunningdale for the week, they get what they deserve.)
But the organisers have done their best with the transport, too. It’s said the 20-mile tailbacks one has come to expect from this week will run like clockwork. However, if one is to sit in a traffic jam for six hours, one needs the comfort of knowing one is in Berkshire and the person in the next car is of the calibre one might exchange nods with over canapés.
So it was clear from the moment I overheard it at Claridges that Ascot At York Royal, or whatever, was social death. Then Cynthia Stridingly-Holler had the frightfully clever idea of hosting the whole day in London. Everyone said they would definitely go. We all had to turn out as usual — hat from Cozmo, dress from Alice and a picnic hamper from F&M — but to a venue in the City with the sideshow bit on a big screen behind us. I never did find out what happened. Cynthia stopped mentioning it to her diarist friends.
So did you watch York Ascot Up Royal on the television yesterday? I was utterly run off my feet — Tuesday is when my lady does — but managed to snatch five hours. I hadn’t realised how much people obsess about that horsey stuff on the BBC, too. It quite ruins the fashion, such as it was.
Anyway, it was just as I knew it would be. I counted at least three girls whose handbags and shoes didn’t match [GASP! OMG! Has there ever been a more serious fashion crime?! :roll: ] and there was someone I didn’t recognise standing within ten paces of the Queen! Quite what security in that backward little outpost thought they were doing, I don’t know. It could have been anyone! Given nobody up there would have known what sort of people they should be admitting, it’s quite plausible that a member of al-Qaeda could have infiltrated the Royal Enclosure and placed our monarchy at risk.
[Sorry, but isn't it Buckingham Palace that has had the most security breaches recently?!]
Talking of the Queen, she’s had to put a brave face on the whole sorry business, of course. Whenever one commiserated with her on the relocation, she made polite noises about how important the whole thing is for the horses and insists she’s still looking forward to it. Once, she even mentioned The Northern Economy and visiting the beautiful Yorkfordshire [geographically incorrect again!!!!! :shock: ] Hills. What a trooper she is. Terrific sense of humour.
I wonder what colour she’ll be wearing today?
[ :evil: Maybe if it was held in Berkshire with the workmen digging up the track or whatever she'd have found less to complain about :roll: Can you imagine? "And George the Best has cleared the first scaffolding! He's approaching the ten foot ditch just in front of him! Over the burst waterpipe he goes! Now for the brick pile and he's down! :roll: ]
June 15, 2005
But darling, how frightful it is even to consider leaving Berkshire
By Lydie Hisserton-Lopley
(aka Lydia Hislop of The Times and the BBC)
IT IS a truth universally acknowledged by anyone who is anyone that Royal Ascot is rubbish this year. Literally nobody went yesterday [but she and the Queen did?! :wtf: ] and it will be the same today. After all, who wants to trek up to Yorkhamptonshire [geographically incorrect!] to see one’s friends when one can just ask for the car to be brought round and drive to the end of the road?
Really, it was so inconsiderate of Ascot to move the royal meeting to the North. It serves them right that now they’re reaping the hurricane. They should have listened to us when we told them it would be a disaster. We knew it would be, just as one knows without having to read his books that Philip Pullman is corrupting our children. One only needs pick up a newspaper to be quite certain.
The scariest thing was the decision to relax the entry rules for the Royal Enclosure. Usually, two members have to vouchsafe that you’re a blood relative of terribly social people on both their mother’s and father’s side, or that you have an account at Coutts. It’s important to know that when someone vomits on your Balenciaga that they or their parents can afford the dry-cleaning bill. Or that it’s Rigby & Peller, not M&S, on show when a girl is sloshed, face down in the flowerbed.
Etiquette will go to the dogs as a result. Friends who boarded at Ampleforth — apparently it’s near the North — tried going to the races once. The poor things said Yorksteadians seem most interested in those smelly brown animals haring past and at intervals are even liable to break off conversation to applaud one of those brightly coloured short people. Quite what all the excitement is about is beyond me.
Obviously, some effort was made to retain some vestige of exclusivity at the royal meeting. The absurd notion that one should be able to buy a bottle of champagne for less than £25 has been condemned to northern folklore, where it surely belongs. Ascot’s caterers taught those yokels a thing or two: reassuringly, the Lanson and Moët cost more than twice as much as it did there last month.
(By the way, it’s all very well paying a proper price for champers, but when northern hotels try to rip one off by trying to charge almost as much as a B&B in Sunningdale for the week, they get what they deserve.)
But the organisers have done their best with the transport, too. It’s said the 20-mile tailbacks one has come to expect from this week will run like clockwork. However, if one is to sit in a traffic jam for six hours, one needs the comfort of knowing one is in Berkshire and the person in the next car is of the calibre one might exchange nods with over canapés.
So it was clear from the moment I overheard it at Claridges that Ascot At York Royal, or whatever, was social death. Then Cynthia Stridingly-Holler had the frightfully clever idea of hosting the whole day in London. Everyone said they would definitely go. We all had to turn out as usual — hat from Cozmo, dress from Alice and a picnic hamper from F&M — but to a venue in the City with the sideshow bit on a big screen behind us. I never did find out what happened. Cynthia stopped mentioning it to her diarist friends.
So did you watch York Ascot Up Royal on the television yesterday? I was utterly run off my feet — Tuesday is when my lady does — but managed to snatch five hours. I hadn’t realised how much people obsess about that horsey stuff on the BBC, too. It quite ruins the fashion, such as it was.
Anyway, it was just as I knew it would be. I counted at least three girls whose handbags and shoes didn’t match [GASP! OMG! Has there ever been a more serious fashion crime?! :roll: ] and there was someone I didn’t recognise standing within ten paces of the Queen! Quite what security in that backward little outpost thought they were doing, I don’t know. It could have been anyone! Given nobody up there would have known what sort of people they should be admitting, it’s quite plausible that a member of al-Qaeda could have infiltrated the Royal Enclosure and placed our monarchy at risk.
[Sorry, but isn't it Buckingham Palace that has had the most security breaches recently?!]
Talking of the Queen, she’s had to put a brave face on the whole sorry business, of course. Whenever one commiserated with her on the relocation, she made polite noises about how important the whole thing is for the horses and insists she’s still looking forward to it. Once, she even mentioned The Northern Economy and visiting the beautiful Yorkfordshire [geographically incorrect again!!!!! :shock: ] Hills. What a trooper she is. Terrific sense of humour.
I wonder what colour she’ll be wearing today?
[ :evil: Maybe if it was held in Berkshire with the workmen digging up the track or whatever she'd have found less to complain about :roll: Can you imagine? "And George the Best has cleared the first scaffolding! He's approaching the ten foot ditch just in front of him! Over the burst waterpipe he goes! Now for the brick pile and he's down! :roll: ]