Robert the Westie. My life. By me.

11. Another family affair or two or three.

Am I alone in finding the early years of the 1990s a rather surreal period? I don't mean, literally, that I recall it littered with Magritte's floating rocks or Dali's melting watches, much though this art genre fascinated me. No, it was just that everything that happened had a dimension larger than life, or even death. 

            Why did people living in part of Canada find themselves voting to leave the nation and set up an independent state? This seemed to happen just because some of them spoke French. I gathered from Steve that the French suffered from deep paranoia about their natives tongue. Its slow disappearance, mainly displaced by the growth of English as the international business language, seemed to represent an assault on their national pride. Steve said wickedly that this was merely a symptom of their prevailing inferiority complex. Defeat by the Germans in two world wars, and much worse, rescue by the British in the same two world wars added up to what he called a "double whammy." Now the triumph of English had made the whammy a triple rather than a double. My only opinion on the French, naturally enough, came from my encounters with a breed of animal called a poodle.

            If this wierdly trimmed, consistently pompous, unforgivably arrogant brand of doggie shared his nature with his national owners, France was a place I would happily leave unvisited. As he often reflected, Steve had great affection for the country, its scenic contrasts,  the long coastlines washed by both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and an intangible quality of the light that had inspired an elite list of the world's greatest artists. Yes, Steve loved France. There was less evidence that he loved the French.

            Having failed to get my head around the issue of Quebec independence, I was not the least bit surprised when the voters rejected the idea. This seemed to make the campaigners even more manic in their determination to break away from the mother nation. Events back in Windsor, England, gave them some bizarre encouragement. I refer, of course, to a serious fire at Windsor Castle and a clutch of royal divorces. Yes, it's another family affair, or, rather, a series of them.

            Yes, the Queen of England was still an important figure in the life of Canada. But she was a much bigger deal in her home nation. My first impressions, formed by her televised regal appearances and the plummy accent that accompanied her utterances, were that this must surely be the most important woman on earth. Steve put me right.

            "It's all for show and tourist dollars," he explained to me and Jason one evening." Since the arrival of parliamentary democracy after we beheaded Charles the First, the monarch has had no more than a symbolic role as head of state.  So she receives regular visits from the Prime Minister to update her, when she can express her opinions privately. But, in the end all she does is read out the government's policy plans at the annual state opening of Parliament. I used to think you could guage her opinion from the expression on her face, but that was so consistently grumpy, who the hell knows what she is really thinking?"

            Jason giggled. So I added a cheery bark. I saw my role in the family as helping to keep the good moods flowing sweetly. At this stage in their relationship, this was usually a simple task. Yes, you are right to detect a note of warning. But let's get back to Her Majesty.

            One trait endeared me to her deeply. Clearly she was a doggie lover. Almost all her informal public appearances had her walking an unruly gang of a breed called Corgis. They were not the cutest of our many kinds, short of leg and with an unstylishly urgent gait. But they seemed quite friendly and even-tempered, unlike the snotty poodles I mentioned earlier. Evidently she doted on them. This was, perhaps, more than could be said for her children. I sympathised.

            They dominated the news, whether in print or on television. Readers of these words will be all too familiar with the messy relationships, scandalous extra-marital romances and ultimate divorces. Indeed, in her "Address to the Nation" at the end of the year, she owned up to looking back in some anger.

            "1992", she reflected, "is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis."

             Inevitably this masterful understatement unleashed a raft of inappropriate jokes about the Queen's anus, many of them happily shared by Steve who seemed to relish this assault on Her Majesty's majesty. I, however, recognised that the litany of disasters to which she had alluded gave her grounds for complaint.

            Her second son, Andrew, the tubby Duke of York, had announced in March 1992 that he would he separate from his wife, Sarah, the Duchess. No one was surprised when, later in the year, scandalous pictures of a topless "Fergie," as she was universally known, appeared in all the tabloids newspapers. The toplessness was not the main issue. More was made of her obvious pleasure in having her toes sucked by her dear friend, John Bryan.

            April saw her daughter, Anne, the Princess Royal, divorcing her husband Captain Mark Phillips after a separation that had begun three years earlier.

            In June, it was the turn of her other son, Charles, heir to the throne, to suffer the embarrassment of the publication by his wife, the Princess of Wales' of her tell-all book, Diana, Her True Story. By December, they had separated and the future for them held only the inevitability of divorce.

            So the Queen had seen all her grandchildren directly affected by the divorces or separations of their parents. Any Grandma worth her salt would have been in despair about her offspring. This one certainly was.

            If the family reputation was in flames, the same could soon be said of one of her stateliest homes. On November 20th, Windsor Castle, caught fire. The largest inhabited castle in the world, and the oldest in continuous occupation, it is, as I write, one of the Queen's three official residences, usually described as her favourite.

            The blaze, that had us glued to the television news channels for many hours, needed the efforts of two hundred and fifty firefighters deploying one and a half million gallons of water before it was finally extinguished. One hundred rooms of the castle were damaged, and priceless works of art destroyed.

            "I've always told you to watch the heat from the spotlight you are forever leaving on in the study," Steve lectured Jason. "Now you know why!"

             I could not help noticing that Steve had developed a bad case of occasional rebukes at Jason's less considerate habits. Where once he would completely ignore, or gently chide his lover, for minor infringements of their domestic bliss, he now seemed to leap on any opportunity to criticise. Jason had noticed.

            "Can't you ever resist putting the boot in, Steve?" he pleaded. 'We should be sharing our monarch's grief, not reviewing my inadequacies as your housemate! And partner," he spat.

            He had stormed out. It would not be the last moment of tension that I will describe for you, though the main denoument was still many years away. But I diverge from my main theme.

            Although the nation apparently shared in the Queen's woe at the damage to her home, a huge public debate broke out over who should foot the bill. Prime Minister, John Major, had originally indicated that the government would fund the cost of repairs. After all, Windsor Castle, like Buckingham Palace, was government-owned. But, under pressure from the vociferous public, he came up with a plan to spare the long-suffering British taxpayer by opening some of the royal residences to tourists during the summer period when the Queen would not be not in residence. The resulting revenues would support the castle repair costs.

             In the event, the restoration cost over forty million pounds and took five years. Its completion in November 1997 saw little rejoicing, as the nation was still grieving over the tragic death of Diana in Paris the previous year. This event had capped a period of unparalleled unpopularity for the royal family stretching all the way back to the evidence of family dysfunctionality in this year of 1992. More would be in evidence in 1993.