Changing the guard

Things are always changing.

Yesterday, I learned that, for the first time, the Royal Navy has taken its turn at mounting guard at Buckingham Palace, choosing to include in this guard a seaman who was also a young lady, complete with some sort of machine gun, complete with fixed bayonet. Is this lady another first? Are ladies allowed in the Coldstream Guards?

Then this morning, I read of Maigret, nearing retirement, having a run-in with a new breed of examining magistrate, his old enemy Coméliau having retired. A new examining magistrate who was fresh out of law school and wanted both to do away with the rough old ways of Maigret & Co. and to go one better in terms of results and reputation. All part of the creative tension between the Police and the Parquet, mirrored in this country in that between the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service. See reference 2.

In between times, I read at reference 1 (here mentioned for the third time, perhaps yet another first), that old people have been complaining about the bad new ways of young people for a long time, with archaeologists having turned up such complaints from the time of both the Ancient Greeks and the Aztecs. Bargh adds this nice thought from the late Judge Bork: '... No doubt the elders of prehistoric tribes thought that the younger generation's cave paintings were not up to the standard that they had set...'.

For myself, I would only say that bread is not what it used to be when I was young, despite the plague of foodies. It has become very difficult to buy proper English white bread, the large bloomer or split tin of old. I have failed to make the stuff myself and have had to content myself with brown, which I can make.

The illustration, taken from Google's Street View, is of the building which used to house the last English baker which I recall using in a regular way, back in the seventies of the last century. In East Street in Hambledon in Hampshire. Can't speak for their Hovis, but their split tins were first class.

Reference 1: Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do - John Bargh – 2017.

Reference 2: Maigret et les Témoins récalcitrants - Simenon - 1958. Volume 21 of the collected works.