Important news from London. This past week Larry the Cat has been celebrating his 15th year as chief mouser at 10 Downing Street. During that time the tabby has served six different prime ministers and has arguably been considerably more popular than any of them.
Larry was a stray at Battersea Dogs and Cats home before being picked up by No 10 staff in 2011 when David Cameron moved in. Despite his official title, Larry has not been the most efficient rat catcher and received an official reprimand in 2012 when a large rodent was spotted taking a stroll in Mr Cameron's study.
The cat reportedly spends most of his time sleeping, prompting the tabloid press to dub him "Lazy Larry". At the ripe old age of 19 Larry has definitely slowed down a bit and there have been murmurs that he has lost interest in his official rat-catching duties.
Larry has a reputation of being a "cat with attitude". On his old Twitter page he was not shy to voice opinions about his respective owners. At the time of Boris Johnson's resignation a tweet from Larry announced: "I can no longer, in good conscience, live with the Prime Minister. Either he goes or I do." When your own cat turns against you at No 10 it is definitely time to pack it in.
The writing was also on the wall for Liz Truss when she tried to stroke Larry on the doorstep of No 10. The feline displayed considerable displeasure and ran off in a huff down the street.
Larry also made news in June 2019 when US President Donald Trump visited Theresa May at No 10. The cat chose to lie down for a nap under the president's Cadillac (aka "The Beast") and refused to budge. I suspect that's one scenario the US Secret Service hadn't covered in their training.
Siamese days
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his family have their own two cats, Jo Jo and Prince. However, across the Pond Mr Trump is the first US president not to have any pets at all.
Over the years there has been a significant Thai connection concerning cats in the White House. Back in 1879 an American diplomat based in Bangkok sent US president Rutherford Hayes a Siamese cat imaginatively named Siam. In more recent times, Gerald Ford's daughter had a Siamese cat called Shan. It was a beautiful creature but had a nasty habit of biting White House staffers.
President Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy also had a Siamese called Misty Malarky Ying Yang which was admittedly bit of a mouthful. Apparently when Amy was having violin lessons the cat would appear and join in with a bit of meowing. Amy loved the cat as did guitarist Gabor Szabo who went on to compose a jazz fusion number named after the feline, possibly the only musical composition inspired by a presidential moggy.
Farewell to a fine actor
It was sad to learn about the passing of American actor Robert Duvall at the age of 95. I must have seen him in dozens of films going back to the 1970s and he always gave a top notch performance. He won the Oscar for best actor for his portrayal as a washed up country singer in Tender Mercies (1983).
Of course Duvall will always be remembered in his role as Lt Col Kilgore and that famous line in Apocalypse Now (1979) when after an air attack on a Vietnamese village he comes out with: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."
Chamber of horrors
Last week's item on voice recognition technology gone wrong, leading to embarrassing results with television captions, prompted a number of comments. So here are a few more examples. They certainly make boring news reports a lot more interesting.
One of the more entertaining was the ITV show which was interviewing veteran singer Engelbert Humperdinck. The caption which introduced him read: "Engel bert humper distinct." Not a bad effort actually.
There was a puzzling moment when a caption on the BBC read: "The Conservative Party is in favour of attacks on houses." What was actually said was "a tax on houses". Similarly a reporter announcing "the Chamber of Commerce was starting to help" was unfortunately captioned " the chamber of horrors is starting to lurk".
There was another puzzling moment when a report on hospital cleanliness carried the TV caption " Medical staff have been told to step up high jean levels".
Finally, there was the Sky news anchor who said "let's go over to our chief correspondent" which was captioned "let's go over to our cheap correspondent".
The wilting rose
The recent Valentine's celebrations stirred memories of the 1990s when I arrived at the Bangkok Post office one Feb 14 to discover a single red rose left on my desk. Admittedly it looked the worse for wear but at least it was a real rose. Somebody cared. I even put it in a jar of water so it wouldn't become a dead rose.
Later in the evening the cleaner came around, saw the rose and promptly apologised. She explained she'd picked the rose off the floor the night before and put it on my desk but had forgotten to throw it away.
