TOO MUCH TOO SOON.....

This rather grotesque image show the statue being prepared for its unveiling in the Hampshire city of Winchester next week.  Now I`ve always quite liked Winchester.  Been there a few times and it always struck me as a `nice` place to be.  It has a long and proud history of course - a former capital city of the country;  a spectacular cathedral and the seat of power for King Alfred the Great. (He of the burnt cakes.)  

I have the odd tenuous link with the city - it houses the museum and home headquarters of my old regiment the 10th Royal Hussars and indeed one of our old comrades was Lord Mayor of Winchester just a few years ago.  So Winchester has a lot going for it.

Or so it seemed;  because now we learn that Greta Thunberg is the subject of a £24,000 statue  commissioned by Winchester University.  The University has been criticised about the life sized sculpture after residents complained that Greta had absolutely nothing to do with Winchester at all.  She has never visited the city, which is more than 1100 miles away from her home town in Sweden.

But none of that matters of course, for Greta is a world wide icon devoted to shouting at everybody about climate change.  And a curse on anyone who fails to agree with not only what she says but also how she goes about it, including sailing the Atlantic in a balsawood boat tied up with string.  She has been lauded by the UN, EU, has come close to a Nobel Prize and is feted wherever she goes by world leaders who are in thrall to her every word and terrified of being in the slightest bit critical of her and all her works.  It`s all a myth, of course - a well choreographed razzamatazz - which is all the more sad for it has denied this young lady (she`s still only 18) any kind of `normal` life.  It`s all been too much too soon, not only for Greta but also for the rest of us.

There`s clearly an enormous gulf between the gown of the University and the town of Winchester and I think the good folk of that city are right to complain, especially as they hold dear to the real history of the city and its more illustrious forebears.  So here`s a reminder of what a properly deserving statue in Winchester looks like.....

Ah, that`s better.