The Cross-Dressing Cousins

I am often asked by non-bloggers how I decide what to write about. Do I write about what I have been doing (no, it is generally quite boring), about some great dominating theme or interest (no, there are far too many), or about the social, economic and political affairs of mankind (no, just no)? The answer, I suppose, is that it is a serendipitous process. Fellow bloggers will know what I mean, but for the chance visitor, here is an example.

I woke up this morning and had my usual glass of orange juice (Asda Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice) and slice of toast (Warburton Soft White Toasty - medium / well done setting on the toaster). Noticing that Boy Cameron will be facing his first Prime Ministers' Questions today in the House of Commons - and fighting to hold back a yawn - I begin to clear my desk of the accumulated detritus of the previous day. Amongst a pile of papers that seem to have appeared from nowhere I find an unused postcard. It is not a particularly old postcard and it has never been used. It is neither colourful nor particularly pretty. It shows two cousins having a bit of a giggle by dressing up in each others clothes.

The two cousins concerned are George Frederick Ernest Albert of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (known to his subjects as King George V) and Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov (known by some of his subjects as "Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias" and others as a hapless tyrant). The picture was taken in Berlin in 1913 whilst they were visiting another of their cousins, Friedrich Wilhelm Victor Albert (known by everyone as Kaiser Bill). The two chaps thought it would be a bit of a wheeze to dress up in each others uniforms and thus it is Czar Nicholas on the left wearing the British uniform and King George on the right wearing the Russian uniform. Within just a few years of the photograph being taken, the world would change radically for everyone concerned. Having abdicated, Kaiser Bill was living in exile in the Netherlands. King George was still on the throne, but he was King of a country that had been socially and economically broken by the Great War. And his cousin Nicholas was long dead : the victim of a bloody execution in a cellar in an obscure palace in Yekaterinburg. Recent research suggests that the British Government were willing to allow the Czar and his family to come to exile in Britain (a plan the Bolsheviks supported), but King George, fearing some form of political backlash against his own family, vetoed the suggestion.

It just goes to show .... well it just goes to show something. I need to take the dog for a walk now, so I will ponder just what it goes to show whilst we are out on our walk.