I DON'T know about you, but I've seen and read enough about the general election to last me until the next one. The only one I know who couldn't get enough of it was our spaniel Charlie. He gets a biscuit for everything he collects from the doormat. And as about three leaflets from each of six of the seven candidates came through my door, the election campaign used up two weeks of Charlie's biscuit ration.
Surprisingly, nothing came from Eddie Vee of the Monster Raving Loony Party. Which is rather a pity, because had he called on me, I had a pair of size 12 blue suede shoes (bought in a moment of mental aberration) to give to him. These would have gone nicely with the rest of his Elvis Presley ensemble.
But well done, Eddie, your result shows that there are at least another 381 loonies like you in York.
NOW to take a tangential turn and write about something quite different, which has recently been in the news. One of my most satisfying achievements as a bibliophilic schoolboy was learning J. Milton Hayes's poem, The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God, which tells the tale of a daring, love-struck, young subaltern called 'Mad' Carew, who died for the love of his colonel's daughter.
Those with an appreciation for Kiplingesque-type verse, will be familiar with it, and will know that the "yellow idol" is said to have stood "to the north of Kathmandu," the capital of Nepal.
I did not learn the poem at school - I learnt little there. No fault of my teachers, more because of the brevity of my stay in all of the 22 different schools I attended in eight years. It was an old infantryman who taught me the poem. He had served just about everywhere in the world that a British soldier could be found during the early part of the 20th century.
Because the poem had developed my interest in Nepal and a liking for its people, I was upset by the recent news that the king of Nepal and seven members of his family had been killed.
The early reports of the incident, which suggested that they had been shot "accidentally", were, of course, nonsensical and unlikely to be believed by anyone other than those Nepalese people, who might have blind faith in their notoriously conspiratorial politicians.
As so often is not the case, the truth has come to light. It was a brutal murder, triggered by anger and frustration, and will not, like so many other mysterious deaths of heads of state, go down in history as "unsolved", to be periodically recycled to fill weekend newspapers, and motivate amateur detectives to propound bizarre solutions to the mystery.
The 55th anniversary of one such regicide passed three days ago. For it was on June 9, 1946, that 20-year-old Ananda Mahidol, King Rama VIII, eighth king of the Chakri dynasty of Siam (now Thailand), was found dead in his bed, with a gunshot wound to his head. His mysterious death was one of the most traumatic events in the history of modern Thailand. Was it accident, suicide or murder? The case was never fully explained. But the country's prime minister, Pridi Phanomyong, was unjustly held responsible. He was forced to resign and subsequently fled the country to live in China and later France, where he died in 1983.
Bhumibol Adulyadej, Ananda's 18 year-old brother, succeeded him, being formally crowned as King Rama IX in 1950. The red-hot jazz saxophonist Bhumibol and his beautiful Queen Sirikit, who celebrated their golden jubilee on May 5, 2000, continue to reign and enjoy the respect and devotion of the Thai people.
Is there a remote possibility that our illustrious Bard might have been overly optimistic when he wrote in The Merchant Of Venice: "Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long"?
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