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In my defence, I had no idea who Charles’ visitor was that day. It shouldn’t matter, of course, but in this case it did. If that all sounds somewhat cryptic, my fellow subject, read on!
It was a weekend when Charles was corgi-sitting all three of us at Highgrove, his personal home in Gloucestershire, while the Queen was making a brief trip to Europe. Highgrove was always a treat for we three, given its open access to gardens brimming with unfamiliar scents and astir with life.
At midmorning, a visitor appeared with his own dog, a pretty little white poodle called Mitzy. Charles and the visitor headed straight outside to walk through the sunlit gardens with an ease of familiarity that suggested this was something of an established routine. All three of us corgis initially accompanied the men. But like Mitzy, we were soon embarking on our own adventures, distracted by powerful aromas beckoning from the flowerbeds; chasing each other down tunnels of sweet peas; scrambling excitedly at the sight of a distant rabbit.
I was quite some distance from the two men when I first noticed Mitzy, really noticed her. I was already earning a reputation for sociability, having befriended Football the cat while on holiday at Balmoral and forming a close affection for one of the Queen’s Sandringham horses, who would bend down to greet me with a gentle nuzzle, something Her Majesty had remarked upon warmly.
However, the attraction I felt towards Mitzy was of an altogether different kind. Admiring her fluffy rump, the way the saucy little minx thrust her hindquarters in the air while snuffling in the undergrowth, I was suddenly and powerfully overwhelmed by a new instinct: I had to have her!
Mitzy reacted to my brazen mounting with surprise at first, then with apparent willingness, before turning for no apparent reason and nipping me. Yelping, I leapt from her, much to the droll amusement of Winston nearby. Fortunately, Margaret was still in relentless, if futile, pursuit of the trespassing hare.
Why did I attempt a second, third and even fourth mounting? I cannot say, without blaming hormones. And it was only the quite severe bite and cautioning bark that followed, that saw me off. Mitzy headed back towards her owner. Reacting to the bark, the two men looked over at the approaching dogs.
‘The new pup’s probably taking liberties,’ observed Charles, more accurately than he could have realised. The two men chuckled.
Deciding that she’d be safest staying close to her owner, Mitzy remained almost to heel as we made our way into the Carpet Garden, a beautiful courtyard centred on a fountain, surrounded by cypresses, vines, oaks and orange trees in bloom. ‘Quite, quite beautiful!’ exclaimed Charles’s visitor.
He was a middle-aged man, slight of build, with a receding hairline and a bespectacled, intelligent-looking face. There was a sparkle in his eyes as he took in the surroundings. ‘To feed the soil, warm the heart and delight the eye. Wasn’t that your objective for Highgrove Gardens?’ he asked.
Charles nodded. ‘In this particular spot, we’ve tried to capture the Mediterranean ideal of the garden as heaven on earth.’
The visitor stood, taking everything in. ‘Most people would feel much more harmony and peace if they could connect with the natural world more often. All those years I spent in corporate offices, I used to think how cut off we were.’
‘From nature?’
‘Yes.’ Then, after a pause, ‘But not only from that. Many people had long commutes that meant they were pretty cut off from their family for a lot of the week. The relentless grind of it all would leave them exhausted by the weekend. There wouldn’t be much time to recover, then the whole cycle would start all over again.’
As I nosed around the visitor, I wondered who he was. Could he be some high-flying business leader? Nothing in the scent of his walking shoes or freshly-pressed trousers provided a clue. Mitzy remained very
close to him—but always on the other side of his legs from me.
‘It does seem that many people are having to work longer hours than ever before,’ said Charles. ‘And the impact of mobile devices . . .’
‘Terrible!’ The visitor was shaking his head. ‘You no longer leave work at the office. It’s in your pocket. Work time and personal time have become blurred.’
‘And one often has the feeling that people are only half paying attention these days. Even when they put their phones onto silent, you see them react to the vibration in their pockets or handbags. They get distracted. You can tell that their thoughts have gone elsewhere.’
‘It seems to me that there’s a great paradox,’ said the visitor. ‘People have never communicated so much with each other by phone and social media. But at the same time, we seem to be going backwards in our ability to be really present to each other.’
Charles thoughtfully tapped a nearby stone with his foot, before saying, ‘So many paradoxes, aren’t there? Our society has never been so affluent. We’ve never had such amazing technology. We’ve never travelled so much nor had such long life expectancy. But along with all the good things is this dark underside. Depression affects one in four people. There’s an increase in single-person households and social fragmentation. On one hand, we’re materially better off than ever. On the other, it doesn’t seem to have made us any happier.’
Charles’s visitor regarded him closely. ‘I wrestle with exactly this dilemma all the time.’
Nodding, Charles began walking again, heading in the direction of the organic gardens surrounding the oak pavilion, a mysterious structure mounted with an obelisk that was nevertheless curiously in keeping with the lavish foliage and plants all around it.
‘As a society, I often feel we’re at risk of losing our way,’ said his visitor. ‘We’ve made it all about the individual—glorification of self. People feel under pressure to lead a certain lifestyle. On social media, kids feel under pressure to create fictional personas to seem cool, more enviable and to have more online friends. At the same time, there’s a recognition that it’s all pointless make-believe, which leads to profound unease.
‘When I go to poorer countries, they are preoccupied by very different things. You don’t take anything for granted, if your electricity supply is hit and miss or if you can’t always buy rice or soap or toothpaste at the shops. You barter with friends. You rely on neighbours. There’s a genuine interdependence, a sense of being connected. It brings people closer as a community. That willingness to help each other out really makes people value each other.’
‘Are you saying,’ asked Charles, ‘that our social problems have come about because people aren’t deprived enough?’
Behind his glasses, his visitor’s eyes twinkled with humour. ‘That’s a provocative question!’
‘It’s meant to be,’ chuckled the Prince of Wales.
‘I do sometimes wish I could put people on a plane to parts of Africa or South America for a few months. The change in kids who go overseas to volunteer in their gap year is usually quite remarkable.’
‘I’ve seen it myself.’
