The Queen and Her Pocketbook: More Important News Items from the Week

And in truly important news as one week ends and another begins: in case you've ever wondered what the Queen (i.e., HM Elizabeth II of Great Britain, Ireland, and the Dominions) totes around in that regally large purse of hers, wonder no more.  Jessica Misener spills the beans (or, more precisely, dumps the purse upside down and rummages through its contents) in a tell-all article at Huffington Post yesterday.  It appears Her Majesty's pocketbook contains predictable ladylike articles including reading glasses, lozenges, tubes of lipstick and mirrors, a fountain pen (is there any other kind?), and crisply folded banknotes to place in the church donation plate of a Sunday.

I actually have wondered about HM's pocketbook and what mysteries it hides for the following reason: last spring, not long after William and Kate married, Steve and I were walking our dogs in the park one day and caught the attention of other dog-walkers in the same park.  I say, "we caught the attention," but it was our dogs who caught the eye of the fellow dog-walkers.  In our neighborhood, people are far more likely to stop, talk, and bond around dogs and cats than around fellow human beings.  The list of contact numbers and email addresses we circulate each year for our block contains the names not only of all the people living at each house number, but also the names of all dogs and cats, whose numbers rival that of the people living in the houses in the block.  They are, we all reckon, people in their own right, albeit somewhat more furry than some of the rest of us.

And so we're walking one day following the royal wedding and up come several people with their dogs on leashes and say what almost anyone who sees a corgi says.  Which is, "Corgis!"

And after we have allowed that, yes, Flora is a full-blooded Pembroke and Val and Chris her half-breed progeny, we have a discussion of corgis and what corgis are wont to do.  Which begins with the rather odd question (or so it seems to me initially), "And did you watch the royal wedding?"

My response: "No.  Were there corgis there?"  I truly don't mean to be facetious.  Since the fellow dog-walkers seem to be connecting the wedding to corgis and since we are talking about England and the family of HM Queen Elizabeth, after all, I do think it is entirely possible that a train of corgis might have sauntered down the aisle following Kate's wedding train.

And to paraphrase Dr. Johnson, I'd far liefer pray with many corgis (and other dogs and cats) I know than with many a fellow human.

"No," they reply, "unless Queen Elizabeth had some in her purse."

To which I respond: "Oh!  So that's why she carries that humongous purse around."

"Yes," the park folks say.  "We suspect she has purse corgis she carries around with her."

Jessica Misener doesn't mention the purse corgis.  But it's entirely possible Her Majesty had removed them before she let Ms. Misener turn her pocketbook upside down.

The photo shows Queen Elizabeth greeting corgis (and their owners) in October 2007.  Her own purse corgis are safely stored inside her pocketbook.