Awesome news from the Mother Country

When I first noticed a tweet suggesting that our dear former prime minister Julia Gillard was knitting a stuffed kangaroo for the future monarch, I said to myself: "What a charming little hoax story... at about the level of a high school magazine." At first sight, I would have never imagined that it was the bloody fair dinkum truth!

— photography Grant Matthews, styling by Judith Cook © The Australian Women's Weekly

Shit, we're a dumb country, with super-dumb leaders. Is this dreary situation likely to improve in the foreseeable future?

This morning, I was amused to realize, all of a sudden, that my attitudes towards royalty are quite similar to my attitudes towards religion. That's to say, they're excellent subjects for historical research and reflections (for example, my genealogical writings evoke constantly both royalty and religion), but these two themes are as out-of-place in the modern world as the old diseases that used to decimate babies and young kids, only so recently, royals and plebeians alike.

Thanks to science, the world has evolved remarkably since the time when I was a child, witnessing other kids condemned by such terrible afflictions. Today, it's high time that we were all immunized... against archaic religion and royalty.

POST SCRIPTUM: In looking back upon what I've written this morning, I'm amused to realize that I'm far less interested in the Windsor baby than in the three little marcassins that emerged from beneath my mailbox. A wise observer might conclude (whether or not it's meaningful, let alone true): An old man is awed by the babies that he deserves.