Anne Duke

Aristocratic Cobblers

Cobblers means codswallop. Codswallop means my eye and Betty Martin. Or drivel. What it all boils down to is that it’s a lot of jazz and junk to imply being aristocratic is indivisible from a pink hat and an Ascot sunshade.

For us ANNE DUKE looks aristocratic all over. Elegant, bewitching and self-assured. Maybe self-designated aristocrats have a butler to help them over a gate to ensure they don’t have trouble with their skirts, but you can’t say an elegant, bewitching and self-assured look doesn’t have an aristocratic aura to it—even when there’s a gate trying to sabotage the elegance.

Anne is Welsh. We don’t know if she can sing but she isn’t half lovely to look at. The man who lives round the next corner to her has gone off his cornflakes and gone on to carrots. He wants to sharpen up his eyesight. “What for?” asked his wife. “Oh, just to make sure I won’t miss anything,” he said.

“What’s anything?” she said. “Oh, you know, birds and flying saucers,” he said.