Rest in peace. 99 isn't a bad age to go, what a life he had.
You promised us instant messaging. All we got is colour postcards. This is the beginning of a dark age.
Most electronic messaging forms are either closed (do you have Telegram? How bout Signal? Or maybe Messenger? Snapchat? Etc.) or basically inundated with electronic spam. If I got an email claiming to be from the Queen of England I’d just think it’d be a more ballsy version of the Nigerian prince scam.
https://youtu.be/7Quyte7zN70?list=PLkX9Ba6AAK_2g3Y9Y8MdLbbcT...
I organised one for my grandparents a couple of years back. They also received a card from the Prime Minister [of New Zealand], the Leader of the Opposition, their local MP, and a couple of other random politicians and dignitaries.
It's not something that I thought about at the time, but I'm quite happy that it's something you need to apply for. It would be a bit disconcerting if the Queen had access to the birth, death, and marriage records of everybody in New Zealand.
I sent Bill Clinton an invitation to my high school graduation party, and got a letter back from the White House telling me to work hard in college.
But mailing a birth announcement to the White House is a much better idea. They send a card back to the child welcoming them to the world. You can file it away and then give it to your kid when they are an adult and tell them this is the first letter they ever got.
I believe my grandmother waited around for this, at the end. She had never been particularly interested in the monarchy, I’d thought, but when she got older and had trouble reading I noticed that among her large print gardening books were a couple on the monarchy.
she'd crafted and penned -
A letter to Philip
that she'd never send.
From reddit's resident poet, "poem_for_your_sprog": https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/mnerwn/prince_ph...
I thought The Sprog had emerged on HN