A lorry-load of 6ft bunnies just went past the window and that almost never happens.
I live in a strange town, it’s an odd mixture of ordinary and extraordinary.
Some days I don’t see a soul and on others there are 10,000 people outside the front door and I have to coax the dog past the television cameras.
On Thursday we had an influx of people armed with canvas boards and paints for the filming of Landscape Artist of the Year at Dunnottar Castle and then the bunnies, or rather hares, arrived.
The colourful statues are part of The Big Hop Trail to raise funds for Clan Cancer Support and Stonehaven’s is called Hare Styles – Treat People With Kindness by artist Vanessa Gibson.
Royal residences turn heating down
I’m fully expecting a throng of teenage fans to descend any minute once the Chinese whispers get out that ‘Harry’ Styles is down at the harbour, which isn’t that far-fetched as he recently played golf down the road at St Andrews.
On Wednesday artist Grayson Perry collected his knighthood from Prince William at Windsor Castle.
He attended as his alter ego Claire and wore a burgundy taffeta dress for the occasion.
In 2014 he chose a “mother of the bride” outfit to collect his CBE medal and this week remarked: “They’re very cool at the Palace.”
We now know this is literally the case after it was revealed the heating has been turned down at royal residences to cut energy use.
Royal visit
The Sovereign Grant report said The Royal Household’s spending rose by 5% last year, to £107.5m, while its funding from taxpayers remained at £86.3m.
That must be why the King is keen to buy a pair of rusty old gates from Union Terrace Gardens for £500.
Managers at the monarch’s Royal Deeside estate Birkhall are on the hunt for surplus ironmongery and the gates would be in keeping with the King’s commitment to recycling as well as being an absolute bargain.
Prince William had nothing to say about royal homes but much to say about homelessness when he visited the Tillydrone Community Campus in Aberdeen.
Critics accused William of straying into politics after he said homelessness should be “rare, brief and unrepeated” and should not exist in a “modern and progressive society”.
Comedian Ben Elton did not so much stray into politics as charge in all guns blazing when he accused Rishi Sunak of being a “mendacious narcissistic sociopath”.
On Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, the Blackadder scriptwriter was asked to discuss her interview with the prime minister and described it as an “extraordinary Orwellian, meaningless, evasive word salad”.
It sounds like something Rowan Atkinson’s character might say to Baldrick but Tory activist Claire Bullivant said it sounded like a party political broadcast for the Labour Party and accused the BBC of bias.
Meanwhile in Moscow…
In Moscow, the best they can hope for in any new leader is “a pragmatic kleptocrat who appreciates that the war is bad for business” according to Russian-born author Niko Vorobyov.
His comments came amid speculation that Putin’s 23-year reign could be coming to an end after the Wagner Group’s attempted coup.
Names have been bandied about as to who could replace him, with each more alarming, if that’s possible, than the last.
Tooled-up mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, nicknamed Putin’s Chef is one, while Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the FSB spy agency who is believed to have ordered the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, is another.
Startling discovery
Another contender is Alexei Dyumin, goalkeeper at Putin’s ice hockey club and his former bodyguard.
His main contribution to the current regime appears to be that he let Putin’s goals through so the leader could be seen hitting the back of the net on television.
Donald Trump scored an own goal when a tape emerged of a 2021 meeting in which he told an aide he had “just found” a “big pile of papers” that included a plan to attack Iran.
He is heard shuffling documents and telling people who didn’t have security clearance: “This is highly confidential.”
He then adds: “Hey, bring some, uh, bring some Cokes in please.”
Because that’s what you need after the pulse-quickening discovery of a top secret plan to attack Iran – more caffeine.
