I’ll toast Camilla for her common touch!
INEVER thought I would write this but you’ve got to love the Duchess of Cornwall. Cheshire cat grins erupted all over the UK last week when Camilla broke the hilarious news that she collects royal memorabilia. Apparently she combs car-boot sales for mugs featuring her mum-in-law, snaps up bargain biscuit tins festooned with corgis and just like the rest of us has a soft spot for a three-tiered cake stand embossed with the features of the late Queen Mum. OK... I might be embroidering the details, but who didn’t embark on a bunting-adorned flight of fancy at the thought of the Duchess coughing up actual legal tender for majestic merch, when she is, bar the rubber stamp, Queen-in-waiting? It’s like Justin Bieber buying a tombola ticket with an “I’m a Belieber” sweatshirt as the star prize.
Is she pulling a fast one, claiming to be a collectibles hound for PR purposes? Does she want to appear to be “down with” we normal folk? I don’t think so.We know she can’t wait to leave the gilded Highgrove halls to charge back to ciggies and comfy slippers at her own family home, Ray Mill House. We know she’s a hands-on grandma – not especially royal, a devourer of books – not very royal, and rarely seen on horseback – distinctly unroyal!
Is she really just like us? Camilla told her foodie son Tom in an interview that her favourite dishes are not, as we might expect, quail, crêpes Suzette and boeuf en croute. Top of her delicious hit parade are Heinz baked beans on toast. Coming a close second, fish and chips wrapped in paper.
WE KNOW she’s telling the truth because she doesn’t say “newspaper” which is now strictly prohibited. Delightfully, she says her mother Rosalind Shand, who taught her to cook, was frustrated by her propensity to eat frozen chicken pies and admits she could fill a book with her cooking disasters.
Note the absence of the words “organic” or even “free trade”. Note the brand loyalty of generations of impressionable telly-watchers programmed to believe “Beanz Meanz Heinz”. Note the lack of “wokeness”, absence of veganism and disregard for fad or fashion, not a jot of quinoa to be seen here, thank you. I wouldn’t call myself a Camilla convert but I am coming to admire the cut of her jib.
AN APPLE watch captured the last moments of a police community support officer as she was battered to death while walking her dog, a court heard yesterday.
The smart device showed that PCSO Julia James’s heart rate “surged” as she spotted her killer lurking in woods near her home and desperately tried to escape, jurors were told.
The watch also pinpointed the precise second her heart stopped as she was struck repeatedly over the head with a 3ft-long railway jack weighing 6.5lbs.
Data from the Apple watch is a key part of the evidence against Callum Wheeler, 22, who went on trial yesterday at Canterbury Crown Court, charged with her murder.
Apart from changes in Julia’s heart rate, her watch also plotted her exact route and even the pace of her footsteps from her home to the spot where she died. The killer had
allegedly been lurking in the woods waiting for a victim to attack, the jury was told.
Mother-of-two Julia, 53, had come face-toface with Wheeler in Ackholt Wood near her home in the village of Snowdown, Kent, three times in the past, the court heard.
She had described him to her husband Paul as a “really weird dude”.
The couple saw him two months before the attack as he loitered near one of Julia’s favourite spots, which she called “Butterfly corner”.
Alison Morgan, QC, prosecuting, said: “Her attacker was waiting in the woods for someone to attack and then ambushed her.
“Julia tried to escape her attacker but was subjected to a brutal and fatal attack. She sustained catastrophic injuries and died where she fell.” Julia was subjected to a “sustained, violent, blunt force trauma,” Ms Morgan said. The railway jack was found in Wheeler’s bedroom, she added.
“A heavy blunt object was used to murder Mrs James and when we come on to consider her injuries you will understand why it must have been an object of that type that killed her,” Ms Morgan said. “The prosecution alleges, and there may now be no dispute, that the weapon was a large railway jack.”
Julia, wearing Wellington boots, had no chance to escape, Ms Morgan said. “He waited for Mrs James or another vulnerable female to be in those woods. Waited to ambush her. He chased her down. She ran, desperate to get away from her attacker. Unable to outrun him, caught by surprise wearing Wellington boots, he struck her. “She fell to the ground, she broke her wrist. “Then, when she was face down on the ground, he struck her again and again. She had no chance of survival.
“When he hit her in that way repeatedly using that weapon he knew that and he intended it.”
Wheeler, who lives in nearby Aylesham, denied being the killer for a long time, Ms Morgan said. But the jury were told he now accepts “he was the person who killed Julia James” on April 27 last year. However, he has pleaded not guilty to murder.
He was arrested on May 7 last year after police circulated a photo of him and he was recognised by a witness.
The picture was taken by gamekeeper Gavin Tucker seven months before the attack after he saw Wheeler walking across a field and asked him what he was doing. Mr Tucker, who was suspicious of the young man, came forward after the killing. Wheeler barricaded
himself into his bedroom when police arrived. According to Ms Morgan, he yelled: “B ******* ...five of you ran in here and I didn’t even use a weapon, when there was a weapon right there,” allegedly referring to the railway jack in his room.
Wheeler’s DNA was later found on Julia’s black Wellington boots, jacket and white vest worn under her jumper, Ms Morgan said.
Julia’s blood was on Wheeler’s trainers and on the railway jack, she added.
She regularly took her Jack Russell Toby for a walk inAckholtWoods, the court heard.Two months before the attack, she and Paul spotted Wheeler close to where he would kill her, jurors were told. Ms Morgan said: “On two occasions, she commented to Paul that she had passed a ‘really weird dude’ on the AckholtWood bridle path.”
In February last year, the couple saw Wheeler, and Julia told Paul he was the same man she had seen previously, the court heard.
Paul later made an e-fit picture of the stranger, which Ms Morgan said bore a “striking similarity” toWheeler.
On the day of the attack, she said,Wheeler was captured on CCTV slipping through a gap in a hedge as he made his way towards the woods.
He arrived in the area of “Butterfly corner” shortly before Julia and Toby walked towards it. Suddenly, she saw him, Ms Morgan said.
“He was in that same place that Paul and Julia James had seen him before and it was at that point that Mrs James’s heart rate surged,” Ms Morgan said. “She took a sudden detour off the path and began to move along the edge of the field.
“She was chased by her attacker and it is likely she fell, either from the first blow or by tripping.” Julia suffered a fractured left wrist as she crashed on to the ground, Ms Morgan said. The “serious nature of the violent injuries” to her head meant her skull caved in and she died “extremely rapidly”.
Just 24 hours before the attack, Wheeler had been spotted walking in the area with the railway jack sticking out of a bag, the court was told.
Several members of Julia’s family were in court to hear yesterday’s proceedings.
The trial continues.