**BREAKING NEWS**

 

The Royal Curmudgeon (maybe pending).

As regular readers of this blog will know The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ does not have a Royal Curmudgeon (yet) so The Curmudgeon will cover this story.

Just to hand we have a transcript of the inaugural King's Christmas message where King Charles spaniel will address the billions millions thousands of loyal supporters around the world.

On behalf of my husband and I sorry  ..... on behalf of my mistress and I .... sorry, it's damnably hard to get my head around this .... on behalf of my wife and I - Happy Christmas.

Ninety years ago my great grandfather broadcast the first of these Christmas messages. Today is another landmark because, after a short period of a woman reigning all over you, you've got a king again - me, or us as we say in my (our) circles. Me - that's Charles - King Charles , not the spaniel ha ha .....

.... erm ...

Mummy said ...... The Queen ... the previous one - Queen Elizabeth said to start off the Christmas message with a review not merely of the world, Commonwealth and national events of this year just ending, but to refer to our family and all the good work we do. Well ...... um ..... dad died last year and ..... mum died this year and ...

..... moving on.

It is inevitable that I should seem a rather remote figure to many of you. A successor to the Kings and Queens of history; someone whose face may be familiar in newspapers and films but who never really touches your personal lives - unless you watch that execrable television show whose name one must not mention but now at least for a few minutes I welcome you to the peace of my own home that mum gave to me.

Some of you see me today as just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us. That's understandable if you've been living under a rock for fifty years but I remind you that Mummy lived to a very ripe old age and was your queen for what seemed like forever. It's not as if I'm a spring chicken. I do recognise however that because of these changes I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. How to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old - particularly me.

Some people would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint. That is a very dangerous position to take - particularly against me and my family (or some of them). If people were to throw away religion, tradition and institutions they might get carried away and throw away the Monarchy. Awful.

At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth.  You will understand if I don't include Andrew, Diana and Harry in the list.

Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we own - and I mean the royal 'we' there. I want you to know that many people (Harry and Andrew included) are trying to get their mitts on my (our) stuff and we - and I include all of you, my subjects in that - need to prevent them from doing so. We must stand by what we know is right, everything that is true and honest which certainly doesn't include that television programme that cannot be named and not that Netflix documentary either. We need to stand up against the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.

It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult. That is why we can take a pride in the new Commonwealth we are building. I don't yet know what we are building but am sure that after the antipodean countries leave us that we can find some new and exciting ones. Russia springs to mind as next year Vlad may be interested in an alliance with us (and I mean all of you). Russian oligarch's own all of the best British football teams, artwork and real estate anyway so no change there then.

In the old days the monarch led his soldiers on the battlefield and his leadership at all times was close and personal. We tried to get rid of Andrew this way when we sent him to the Falklands but didn't have much success. Harry too, came back from Afghanistan unscathed even though his red hair (a legacy of that damned father of his) should have made a bloody good target.

Today things are very different. I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations. I have some deucedly good ideas on vegan food production and have been told that I do a cracker Goons's impersonation of Bluebottle.*

I hope that 2023 may bring you God's blessing and all the things you long for. Well, not all of them obviously, let's be reasonable but - have a jolly good one.

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