SHE

 

Occasionally I refer to The Old Girl as 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' on my The Wine Guy site*. See here if you've never seen this site: THE WINE GUY

She Who Must Be Obeyed is a minimalist sculpture 33 feet (10 m) wide and 16 feet (4.9 m) deep made by Tony Smith in 1975.[1] It is located at the Frances Perkins Building, in downtown Washington, D.C. The piece consists of nine geometric rhomboid units, bolted and welded together and painted blue.

OK, I like that and if we weren't selling up and moving could make and erect something like that in our front garden. It's a pity that I didn't discover this sooner.

It has nothing to do with my 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' though.

My reference for 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' is to the excellent John Mortimer series of books and later TV British drama - RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY.

I've recently been re-reading these and must try and find the TV series on the various streaming sites we use. Mortimer is a great writer and I recommend him to you. He has a great many great works to his credit with, to me, the Rumpole series, Paradise Postponed and Summer's Lease being the best.

The interesting thing is that, while I've been re-reading the Rumpole series The Old Girl and my own 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' was reading Rider Haggard's SHE.

In this excellent novel (dated though) that I read when at school the nominal character Ayesha ... well, you read here what Wikipedia says:

The story is a first-person narrative which follows the journey of Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey to a lost kingdom in the African interior. They encounter a native people and a mysterious white queen named Ayesha who reigns as the all-powerful "She" or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". Haggard developed many of the conventions of the lost world genre which countless authors have emulated.

Synchronicity eh.

* I also refer to her as 'Her Indoors' but wouldn't like her to know that. The reference is to that excellent British TV series 'Minder' where the awful Arthur Daley called his wife by that name.