2020, Family, Fantasy, History, Uncategorized

A Little Diversion: The Queen’s Gift

57 Comments

Today’s post comes from Barbara from Rivertown:

Drawing on our recent discussion of what it’s like to be Royal, I wonder if part of the fun might be owning stuff no one else owns, and having the power to give things away if one was so inclined.

I happened on this article listing 31 unexpected things owned by HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

They are as follows:

1. All the swans on the River Thames

2. A pair of corgis

3. All the Dolphins in the United Kingdom

4. Nearly all of London’s Regent Street

5. Half of the UK’s shoreline

6. Six royal residences

7. More than 200 Launer handbags

8. A private ATM

9. The best seat in the house at Wimbledon

10. The Tower of London

11. 150,000 works of art (many of them priceless)

12. Queen Victoria’s Sketchbook

13. A winning team of race horses

14. A car collection worth more than $10 million

15. A tiara covered in 1333 diamonds

16. A massive Faberge Collection

17. Westminster Abbey

18. Hyde Park  [et al.]

19. A Gold Record

20. A bat colony

21. The world’s largest clear-cut diamond

22. Three Crown Dependencies

23. An Aberdeen Angus Cow

24. Two tortoises from the Seychelles

25. Her own flag

26. Four Guinness World Records

27. A bold Blue Peter badge

28. The British seabed

29. An offshore wind farm

30. The UK’s Continental Shelf

31. All of Scotland’s gold mines

32. 25,000 Acres of forest

33. Trafalgar Square

34. Queen Victoria’s wedding dress

35. Henry VIII’s armor

36. Queen Elizabeth II’s own tartan

37. Millions of square feet of retail space

38. A baptismal font

39. A national collection of Mulberries

The game is:  

The Queen has decided it’s time to “lighten up”, and will give each of you one  (or more) of these gifts.

Which of these items would you most like to have?

57 thoughts on “A Little Diversion: The Queen’s Gift”

  1. That’s quite a list. I have mixed feelings about some items. I’ve heard that the Queen’s Corgis nip people’s ankles. I’ll loop back later with thoughts about wealth, but for now I’d welcome lightening Liz’s life by claiming those autos worth ten million bucks. That would really help with my cable TV bill.

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  3. It would be mayhem to have the swans and the corgis. I think the dogs wouldn’t stand a chance if they nipped a swan. I might like Westminster Abbey, but must cost a bit to heat.

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    2. I’m not sure anybody can own the continental shelf. You can CLAIM the shelf, but under what circumstances could you or would you defend your claim? Of course if nobody can own the shelf, anybody can claim it. I think I’ll start a collection of continental shelves.

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  5. I’m not sure I’d want the mess and bother of any of the stuff, although if the Calgary Centennial Stampede Herd would agree to keep the Angus Cow there, which is apparently where it still lives (and pay for its feed), then maybe that’s what I would take.

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  8. Rise and Claim Your Gift, Baboons,

    I don’t even know what some of the stuff is—A bold blue Peter Badge? HMMM. Do I want that? Is it decorative?

    I will take the Corgis (who I think have since died) and the diamond. Everything else is too expensive to maintain, or too unknown. I really do not need more stuff at this point.

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  13. From a selfish, greedy standpoint, I’ll take the gold mines in Scotland since I expect gold prices to eventually go through the proverbial roof in the next ten years or so.

    From an aesthetic standpoint, I’ll take the 25,000 acres of forest so I can camp out and not be bothered by anyone else. Of course, that presumes the forest is in a single large plot. If it’s 5 acres here and 10 acres there, then maybe one or two of her 150000 pieces of art just to jazz up my place a little bit.

    C in O

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  15. For two summers I clerked in an upscale fly fishing tackle shop in northwestern Wisconsin. Several times I got to watch as extremely rich people shopped. I remember the day the Ordway family (the family with the 3M wealth) once came as a group of about seven to shop for gifts for a party they were throwing.

    I had always assumed it must be nice to have so much money you can easily buy anything that appeals to you. That’s not the way it looked. Having an infinite amount of money can be a curse, for it is no longer possible to yearn for material objects. If you can have whatever you want, it becomes hard to want anything very much. Perhaps the Queen has experienced this and worked out a good accommodation to it.

    I don’t assume all wealthy people have the same issues about enjoying wealth. Some rich people probably have a wonderful time buying things. But those summers clerking left me convinced that having unlimited wealth is far from a guarantee of happiness.

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  16. today they simply call it branding you wake up in the morning and you have an identity that you present and that you live by and that determines how you will go forward with each decision that you make and I think being queen or being a celebrity kind of allows you to view from above the critical decisions that are made on a daily basis throughout your life on the one hand it’s kind of a drag on the other hand it’s some thing that probably everyone does just not to the degree that the Royals do it

    my great grandfather was a native American who was placed in the white community and became a powerful attorney and advocate for Native Americans up around the leech lake Indian reservation and he commented in his notes that being a Native American means that you had better never make a misstep because the people who question you will never forgive and will always remember and so you kind of go through life with that overview on the one hand but on the other hand it probably is the right decision and shouldn’t we all be put in a position where the right decision is the obvious choice

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  19. It’s Christmas Eve, and we’ve just finished our traditional Danish feast. This year I had actually managed to get my hands on a pork roast with the rind still on it, and that makes a huge difference.

    Prior to sitting down for our own dinner I plated up a dinner for Philip: Pork roast with crisp rind, boiled potato with brown gravy (not sauce), caramelized small new potatoes, sweet and sour (mostly sweet) red cabbage, and Danish marinated cucumber salad. We delivered it, hot and ready to eat, and he ate every bite of it while we chatted. I left him a box of homemade Christmas cookies to munch on.

    After we got back home, we enjoyed our own dinner. Nice, quiet and peaceful, and if I do say so myself, pretty damn tasty. Then husband did the dishes while I watched Anne Reed’s Christmas Eve concert, live from somewhere in her house. What a lovely, relaxed, and peaceful evening.
    Merry Christmas, everyone.

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