The Prince and us Paupers

You had been in for a cheap Emergency Blip tonight, with my only photo being a sad bunch of seagulls sitting on the opposite rooftop in Beaumaris. Suddenly an eccentric brief encounter intervened.

I am still running a day or two behind on my infernal report, but as Delivery D-Day is now fixed for next Tuesday morning in Aberdeen, my Bank Holiday is now formally cancelled (again :-(). However, I had already promised dear daughter J and boyfriend Jake that I would run him from Beaumaris to Bangor station for his 20:20 train back to Birmingham New Street. So it was that me and MrsB headed down to Anglesey just for Friday night. Heading back to Knutsford on Saturday morning, and thereafter I must be chained to the computer until Monday night. If lucky, I might at least get the lawn mowed by J or MrsB. We live in hope.

Anyway, we got to Anglesey an hour and a half before Jake's train, and so as they had been car-less all week and stranded in Beaumaris, we treated them to a drink on the way to Bangor at The Gazelle Hotel overlooking the Menai Straits.

There at the bar, a very friendly chap in a pink Ralph Lauren polo shirt commented that it was so refreshing to see a lady buy the drinks. I explained this was my lovely daughter J, and that whilst certainly a novelty, it all traced back to the same root source - The Bank of Mum and Dad.

Later on, we got to chatting again outside, and it seems he was staying at the hotel with a young Saudi prince studying at the London School of Economics. As his "P.A" he said he had been taking the Prince sailing from Ireland to Wales, but had suffered gearbox failure in the Irish Sea, and had to be towed into Bangor. He finally introduced himself grandly as Sir Glyneth Jones, and kindly agreed to his blip portrait. As we left for the train, he kissed MrsB's hand and insisted on a "Dutch Kiss" on both cheeks for J.

We had to leave with Jake before his highness the Prince could ever appear. So sadly, we never then got to see if Sir Glyneth was in fact the real McCoy (I think so), or some Walter Mitty acting out a bad Eddie Murphy film script. Afterwards (and as much as we liked Jake), I told J to quickly scrub-up so we could head back and get her introduced to the single prince. Naturally she refused, though worryingly also asked me "are you being serious?" Mmm better not say - but I had a picture in my mind of the elegantly dressed-in-white and stinkingly rich Prince from the film 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen'.

Sir Glyneth looked like such good fun to hang out with over a drink, but guess we were just destined to be ships that passed in the night tonight.