Well poor old Phil is dead. He died yesterday 9th April 2021 two months short of his 100 years. Would Lizzie have written to him then as is her want with centenarians or would she think she has said enough in their 74 year married life? Do you know I admired the man, he said it how he thought it should be said and not how protocol demanded, his whole life under lock and key and the disapproving looks of his wife’s adoring flock. His whole life demanding innocence and duty. No man worth his salt can live under those restrictions so is it any wonder that the facade slipped every now and then, especially when all his peccadillos were rich and/or beautiful or even off the streets like Christine. But shush, what man wouldn’t, especially a caged lion. His wife knew that and without casting any kind of blame she herself had her own ink-well dipped. The pressure must have been unbearable and for hundreds of years wicks have been dipped in similar fashion since Edmund the Confessor who would never have dreamed of such a caper. It stopped of course whilst Cromwell pursued his puritan ways for 5 years some 350 years ago.
Enough of sin but he was writing love letters to his missus when she was 13 and he 18 but I doubt there was anything nefarious in that although he was a full bloodied seaman then and we all know about sailors and their long months at sea. Things happen and they certainly do in that family but what harm as the Kerry man says, what harm.
Philip has died, everybody is sad and the artillery is working again for the first time since Hitler died. It is a wonder they know how to fire them goddam guns, it’s been that long. In all of this I wonder whether anybody has asked the question Why? What made him die shortly before is much longed for letter from Lizzie? Well do you remember it was about three months ago, on 2nd January 2021 that the jab was given to both him and Lizzie, the BBC with all its national pride announced it on the 9th January. It said the Queen decided to go public to assure the nation that everything was hunky dory. The jab was the key to a happy old age. A month later poor old Phil was taken ill and bundled off to King Edward VlI hospital with an infection which proved too much for that venerable care centre and at the beginning of March he was trundled over to St Bart’s where somebody was still working in these Covid times. A quick look over, after all what can medics do, if that is what they are these days. They neither have the staff or the doctors to look after poorly people, they just want to hide behind perspex and pretend their white coats are clean.. They sent him back home where he died three weeks later. He did well, a good innings but what can anybody do when Covid strikes, the dracula of the 21st century, a cross perhaps. The government say Covid has killed millions and anybody still living can count themselves lucky but get the jab and that will definitely see you off.
While I am on the subject I remember the Government saying that it was going to have to lockdown the country, send everybody into penury whilst mentally destroying what little brains were knocking about because just to save one life was more important. They did it, thousands died in old folk’s homes, the country nearly recovered but they then introduced the jab which did the job for a lot more. How in fuck’s name have they managed to save one life when so many people including good old Phil are no longer with us. Many years ago I studied logic at school, nowadays of course logic has disappeared out of syllabus’s and probably out of modern dictionaries also but my lexicon is dated 1979 and says logic is the analysis of patterns of reasoning by which a conclusion is properly drawn from a set of premises, without reference to meaning or context. There is obviously no logic in lockdowns, injections of poisonous substances and risking bronchial illnesses from mask wearing. So why does the government think their system works when there are none of us left to disagree. Poor old bloody Philip, a decent enough guy.
Whilst on the subject of Philip and old age, why has the world turned on us lot, us old folk. Nobody gives a fucking damn about us woe-begotten lot. The world is a different place now than it was just 20 years ago when I was in my prime. I cannot understand the printed word, I cannot understand the language that is spoken, if in fact it is a language at all. To me the world speaks in half-guttural abbreviation, acronym is the new English. Why have we ancients been left behind in this unscholarly world when years ago we were honoured for our wisdom. We still have to live, we still have to somehow or other navigate our way through this spoken gibberish that permeates everything. Unless of course eugenics is the new bible. Let us kill off wisdom, let us all live in this biodegradable youth where meaning means nothing and everything has no point at all. Let all who can, just masturbate themselves to death at the age of 40. Forget maturity just think of yourself as a new born chick waiting to be eaten by a viperous state. Without meaning to be angry or vituperous I think the world has gone fucking mad and that dear reader includes you.
God rest you Philip, you dipped your wick, you served a foreign country, you lived up to what was expected and you had your say. What more can a man ask of himself?
Let Ireland’s Bard speak for you, Yeats at his curmudgeonly best.
You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attention upon old age,
They were not such a plague when I was Young:
What else have to spur me into song?
This is certainly no country for old men as he says in Sailing to Byzantium he wrote in 1927 as Ireland was then an ever changing world.
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
–Those dying generations-at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born and dies,
Caught in the sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
His plain speaking never bothered me either, even in situations in which I myself would have used a little more tact. I could always see where he was coming from, even if his choice of words left room for improvement.
My respect for him increased when I learned about his response to the conviction of Lord Montagu in 1954, during the anti-gay witch hunts of the early 1950s. (Lord Montagu hadn’t actually done anything, but he was gay and that was enough for a jury to consider him guilty of a fabricated charge.) Prince Philip’s reaction was basically: “This sort of thing must stop.”. I don’t know what influence he exerted behind the scenes, but three years later the government of the day set up a commission (the Wolfenden Commission) to examine the law on the matter, and that eventually led – after an unconscionable delay of 10 years – to a certain amount of law reform.
The above doesn’t seem to be widely known, but I have it on good authority. I was told it in 2005 by an elderly gentleman who had moved in high circles, and I have no doubt that it is true. (The elderly gentleman died just a few months ago, at the grand age of 104.)
I have nothing against Yeats, and have read quite a lot of his poetry, but for an epitaph I would prefer Housman:
Good-night; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
Have these for yours,
While sea abides, and land,
And earth’s foundations stand,
And heaven endures.
When earth’s foundations flee,
Nor sky nor land nor sea
At all is found,
Content you, let them burn:
It is not your concern;
Sleep on, sleep sound.
Linda,
Once more we are back on the path of equanimity. It took Old Phil, Yeats et al to convince us.
Just to be clear,
we are talking about Prince Philip, the jewish paedophile??
Bezzie mates of Jimmy Saville, the jewish paedophile!!
Thats fucking weird!!!
A blast from the past! I did not know either Phil or Jimmy were Jewish nor did I think Phil was a paedophile although he might have associated with them. How does any of us know whether we have ever associated with these type of people. They seem to keep their lights under several bushels.