Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Many are already familiar with Ruby, the in-the-house-only Royal Chariot. The difficulties in manoeuvring around the house are best shown rather than spoken of - a picture being worth a thousand words, and all that. As far as I am concerned, this is what the term "between a rock and a hard place" actually means when encountered in real life.

Three of the doors in the house have been widened by Moray Council (God bless them!) and the kitchen is due for spazmoid-friendly renovation in the coming months. Life is good and the house becomes ever-more accessible. The most difficult place remains the bedrooom. From the photo above, you can see the close proximity of the chest of drawers to the bed - the filing cabinet (which must be passed to access the computer) is even wider, making the space narrower. In fact, one day recently, I got the camera and drove Ruby to the narrowest bit, at which point I stopped where I was and took a photo of each side.



This is EXACTLY the space I manoeuvre through - no kidding! I took the picture of the left side then the right, without moving Ruby one fraction of an iota - using the tip of my thumb as an indication of the size of the space. As you can see, if the space on the left is wide enough to put my thumb into, the space on the right side is not! The bits photograhed are kind of the "cat's whiskers" of Ruby, not that they are the best bits, but in that they are the widest bits - if they get through a space, the rest of Ruby gets through.



I finished the manoeuvre, carefully, so as to not wreck the furniture, and downloaded the photos. Chris is going to move the filing cabinet, but I get sort of a twisted thrill at being such a hero!

By the way, don't you think that the word "manoeuvre" is one of the most crazy words to spell EVER (as is "manoeuvring")?! I LOVE spelling checkers! Mine is set to UK, so if you think I spell words like defence, colour and antidisestablishmentarianism wrong it is only because of the differences between we citizens of either side of the BIG Pond - "Blogger" clearly has an American Spelling checker - quite a few of my spelled-correctly-in-the-UK words are underlined in red here! As George Bernard Shaw said, Britain and America are "two nations separated by a common language."

The Coronation

The office of the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths in Elgin, Moray, may at first sound like an unusual location for a coronation, but on Thursday 26 March, the year of Our Lord, 2009, such a thing, indeed, occurred.

Having been granted citizenship of the United Kingdom by another Queen Elizabeth (though one who spells her name with a "z" rather than an "s", presumable to avoid confusion), Queen Elisabeth I of Fochabers began her reign. Seen above is Her Majesty signing the Document of Succession, thus accepting her crown.

Joining Queen Beth (as she is widely known) for this memorable occasion were husband-consort, Chris (who having refused royal title is, by his wife, lovingly thought of as the Bonny Earl of Moray)


as well as Dr. Petrus Jacob du Plooy, Royal Dentist. Dr. du Plooy, originally from South Africa, was sworn in as a citizen of the United Kingdom at the same time as Queen Beth.

No Queen can be so without her subjects. Duchess Tina, and Duke Ray Aitken, were in attendance, as well as Lady Fiona Kyle and Dame Krissie the wonder dog (invisible in this photo - told you she was a wonder!). It was, in fact, in part, due to Ray's reference that all of this came about.



Acting on behalf of Her Majesty (the other one), who was unable to attend, was Heather Greig, Chief Registar for all of Moray, who presided over the citizenship ceremony for Queen Beth and Dr. du Plooy. Smiling down upon them is, of course, the other Queen Elizabeth.