Flavourless Caroline

Holyrood Palace:














































The Queen's summer digs: Pretty? Yes. But check out the sprinklers in the first picture. Note how she doesn't have the automated built-in kind but hers are of the above-ground variety that you have to move around. I have better lawn equipment than the Queen. Of course, she can afford to start watering her lawn in May while lately, we haven't used our sprinklers system at all. But that doesn' matter. Ours are still better than the Queen's.

In other news, soft-drink companies are now voluntarily removing sugary drinks from schools. They're not voluntarily leaving and no one is asking them to stop advertising to students and creating early dependencies on their products. No, they are voluntarily removing sugar drinks to be replaced with their own sugar juices. I am surprised by the lack of action from high schoolers, protesting their freedom to choose. That sounds stupid, I know. The vending machines dictate what students eat and drink. In our senior year of high school, we got a new milk machine and drinking milk became en vogue. Still, I am saddened that no one has protested this yet. In my last couple of years of high school, my lunches generally consisted of Pizzalicious Pringles and a lemon iced-tea. They really were pizzalicious and I loved my 'lunches.' And now, in the furor of fighting obsesity, millions of high school students will not be able to enjoy the crap lunches I once did. I am saddened for them, and saddened even more for our future generation, unwilling to fight for their rights to have heart disease. We don't trust them to make decisions, but don't they trust themselves to choose what they want to eat? Where's the stupid youthful protest? I no longer consider chips ("crisps") and sugar water to be an adequate lunch (they never really were, just something to last me until I got home) just as I no longer eat Number 1 meals at McDonald's (oh, but they were so wonderfully bad) because I grew up just a little bit. Instead of making pacts with soft-drink companies, why don't we show enough faith in our education systems that other children will learn to do the same. Because while the good people of Chinar and Taiwan may disagree, I am not morbidly obese because of my past transgressions. And then later, let's keep our words, and educate.