Slice of life

There are two bountiful sources of news fodder without which the media would be left scratching to fill schedules: reports about the British royal family and reports from the latest scientific and academic research.

- Jane Clifton

Though the former are largely uncorroborated tittle-tattle and the latter exhaustively corroborated through randomised control-group protocols, both sorts of news have pretty much the same impact: really?

To start, as is always tempting, with cake: King Charles is recently reported to be rigorous about having his cake and eating it. He and Queen Camilla have a slice of cake every day, and keep going on the same cake until it's finished. This, if true, shows admirable thrift and character, since if anyone could afford to bin stale cake, it's a king and queen.

However, older reports - never decisively refuted - insist that the king also requires a selection of softish-boiled eggs to be presented for his breakfast, from which he selects the most ideally set. Whatever becomes of the rejected eggs, this is the opposite of thrift and character to the point of being curiously brattish.