Smashing, Positively Dashing...

Royal Ascot is well underway, and betting closed early for guessing the colour of the Queen's hat at Ladies' Day (yesterday). The bookies are down thousands of pounds due to a palace insider having snitched that HM would wear brown. (See the Times article on the ten-year old tradition of betting on this essential detail.) One feels so sorry for them. Absolutely not cricket.

Mrs Edward Claridge (above right) is an Ascot Ladies' Day regular who's usually good for a laugh, while Ms Getty (left) favours unrestrained elegance. But my dear, something simply must be done about tradesmen advertising their wares (below left)... so dreadfully "non-U"...



To see more hats, take a butchers at the BBC website, or visit the Official Ascot Image Store, or alternatively listen to a midi recording of the evocative Ascot Gavotte from My Fair Lady.

"Can I help you?" [Not]

Ever feel frustrated by inane and time-wasting offers of help from modern shop assistants who know less about their products than you do?

"To the man who tried to help me find the right computer cable at Future Shop: Thank you for taking the time to carefully read the packaging of all the cables on display right there in front of me... It was nice of you to make yourself available, but guess what? I, too, can read the information on the packages. In fact, I am an accomplished reader of the English language. And if you have no idea what cables you have in your store and what each one is for, then what exactly can you help me with?

"To everybody who works in stores, restaurants, banks -- anywhere in customer service: Clearly you have been instructed to be helpful, but please stop offering to help when you have no idea what that is."

Read Karen Hahn's beautifully expressed article at The Globe and Mail: HELPLESS

Is it raining or spitting?

The Israeli-in-the-street is still trying to understand whom he is disengaging from, and whether "disengagement" in any useful sense is actually possible.

On 13 May, Palestinian Authority TV broadcast a religious sermon that blamed antisemitism throughout history on the Jews themselves. Delivered by a bearded Palestinian mullah (on the payroll of the PA), dressed in white robes, it was broadcast on the Palestinian Authority's official television station. It has to be seen to be believed, so click here, you need to see this for yourself.

I can't help feeling sorry for any intelligent men in the audience there, having to sit cross-legged at this mullah's feet and listen to his diatribe - supposedly as the fulfilment of a religious duty.

Can one "engage" with this? Can one "disengage" from it?

The comment of the proverbial Jew upon being spat in the face at is: "It seems to be raining". Well... isn't it?

But heavens this is all so gauche. For real spitting, I mean really elegant spitting the way only the upper classes can do it, read this interesting article by Shlomo Avner, former Israel ambassador to the Court of St. James, describing a royal dinner party at Hampton Court. I don't find the events he describes as quite as surprising and shocking as he did, and I do think he may have over-reacted, but the inside information is fascinating none-the-less.