A truly genius way to get rid of that leftover avocado
Prince William has been given an avocado by a child. It is usual to call the bearers of such gifts “well-wishers” and it has been suggested that the gift is intended to soothe the morning sickness of his wife the Duchess. She may or may not be craving an avocado, which is quite a random food item.
I did wonder if the child thought the avocado was too heavy, or was bored with holding it; perhaps he bumped into the prince, thought he could get away with passing it on to him and was, in this case, correct. Perhaps he had never wanted the avocado, and feared he would be made to eat it, or some of it. “I gave it to Prince William” is a strong defence if rebuked about the loss of an avocado by a parent.
If it was not exactly the sword Excalibur, it was at least well meant. People give the Royal family many gifts. They place them into gloved hands. They post them. These gifts seem odd at first but, when viewed over time, they express the oddity of modern royalty – the mystical and the dull – very well. Last year, for instance, the Queen was given a pair of crocheted poppies and a Post-it note holder. Prince William was given an eagle feather, bread mix, and shoes. The Duchess of Cambridge was given a totem pole, nine packets of cereal and two fridge magnets. The Duke of York was given a face mask, an eye compressor and a cardboard crown.
It must be said: the avocado was not an official gift to the prince. If it were, he would not have been allowed to eat it. It would have entered the Royal Collection for posterity and, for as long there is a United Kingdom to host it, there it would stay.
John Lewis, the department store which furnishes the internal dreamscape of middle-class people, now offers a fully immersive experience: you can, for perhaps the first time ever, live inside a department store. There is a flat above the Oxford Street branch, which has been decorated with John Lewis furnishings and filled with John Lewis goods. It is called The Residence and it will be lent to prize-winners in the weeks before Christmas. But it is not an Airbnb. It cannot be rented out to all who desire it. No, like the bedroom in Cinderella’s Castle, Disneyworld – which, incidentally, is horrid – The Residence, John Lewisworld, cannot be had for mere money, which confuses me, since it seems to be the most perfect expression of consumerism I can imagine.
What is the slogan of John Lewisworld? The most magical, middle-class place on earth? And what will happen then? The prize-winners will wear John Lewis clothes and John Lewis perfumes, sleep on a John Lewis bed under John Lewis bedding, and then awake, like Sleeping Beauty, to a Waitrose muffin basket.
I have used the real John Lewis like this for years. I would lie in the beds when I was pregnant. I used to play a game called how-much-is-the-retailvalue-of-all-the-stock-currently-inJohn-Lewis and so The Residence should be my dream home. Instead, I am terrified by too much John Lewis. What if they won’t let you out? Osama bin Laden’s collection of pornographic hic materials will not, it appears,
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion be released by the CIA, and this is upsetting for historians. We learnt quite a lot about Saddam Hussein from the “artistic murals” on his palace walls, after all. We learnt that he liked blonde women with large breasts and codpie codpieces for men.
Eve Even so, the CIA are not usually so prim. Who says yes to rendition, but no to a announcing that mass murderers like w watching Debbie Does Dallas? Is there s something dangerous about bin Laden Laden’s pornography, something harmf harmful to America? I think there is. Each m man kills the thing he loves, and so I su suspect the collection, seized in the rai raid on his final refuge, includes cheerl cheerleaders, soccer moms and San Franci Francisco gays.
All o of this makes Bin Laden seem the cli cliché of the age, an angry man sitting in his pants, which – global terror network aside – was exactly what h he was. I am sorry the stash will not b be released to become disgusting foot footnotes in learned books, but I sin sincerely hope that it will be safe in aba box in that enormous military warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant.