Sunday, July 7, 2013

The search for a souvenir gazunda

In 1997 we were touring Slovakia when I broke the hammer I used to knock in the tent pegs.   It proved surprisingly difficult to find a replacement (known in Slovak as a kladivho) and that phase of the trip report became known as "The search for a good kladivho.".  We now find - thank you SMH - that among the mementos of the impending Royal Birth in the UK ar“.. souvenir potties ..(which) …have been given the royal seal of approval." We gotta find one! (For those not familiar with English slang a pottie goes under the bed - thus "goes under" is pronounced "gazunda".)

In fact we found very few souvenirs of The Birth or even The Naming.  This may be explained by the MD of a ceramics company who explained on TV that they tried to do most of their business by pre-order rather than shopfront retail.

Now I am back home I can search the net to see what is available.  My first generated an up market site not offering a pottie as far as I can tell.  In an emergency I suppose these jugs would serve but Stg3k seems a lot to piddle in, and #2s could be tricky during the training phase.  This company offered a measuring jug for Stg 6.75 would could be useful in view of  his paternal grandpa's scientific interests (but Waitrose can probably offer the same functionality for a couple of quid.  In the end the nearest I got was an offer of a second hand potty-chair. located in the town of Prince George in British Columbia.  (At least the purchaser will know it won't have been used by a bear, as they all crap in the woods.)

My conclusion that like a good potty the SMH article was full of it.

Our only relevant souvenir is the edition of Private Eye current when we left, of which the cover is reproduced below.
Other than this, I wasn't aware of any hysteria whatsoever.  Excluding of course the media trying to find something to get hysterical about.  For goodness sake, for this baby to become important:
  • Betty has to join the great majority which she is showing no signs of doing;
  • Prince Chuck (who The Eye refers to as Brian for some reason known only to Lord Gnome pp Emmanuel Stobes) also has to meet his maker, and with his healthy lifestyle probably has a good few years left in him;
  • George's dad also has to shuffle of (as a military helicopter pilot one would have to say he is the most likely to croak).
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