Tidy is neat, but that only happened here with the table. You can see from the biscuits that are left that coffee has been drunk, although on such a memorable occasion it could have been something stronger.
Would they have been drinking each other’s discoveries over a glass of champagne? Would they have looked each other deeply in the eye? Who looked away first? Or was it just a cup of chamomile tea?
Professional pisk watchers know that that tidy table is not just tidy. The table means: tabula rasa, we start over.
There is still a plate of cookies on the table. There are six of them. Six! How many are they in the new total with the royal family perhaps recently?
I don’t have to draw a picture here: this ingenious setting hides a shipload of subliminal meanings and is made by a communicative grandmaster with an iPhone. People look into the camera relaxed, although Paola from Calabria is holding her handbag a bit stiffly against her body. It is a reflex that you would normally find in the overcrowded metro of a busy metropolis, but in the cosiness of the royal living room in the Weltevree house, that seems a bit exaggerated to me.
Would she subconsciously fear that someone has touched her things?
Thanks to Queen Elizabeth of England, we know that a queen’s handbag comes with a whole vocabulary. When Elizabeth moves the handbag from one arm to the other, she means that she is tired of the conversation partner. People then rush in to deliver her from the miscreant.
It is different with the queen: Paola uses her sacoche as a shield. The leather used to make the handbag thirty times by small Congolese people, protects it from almost all dark forces, according to tradition. The bag contains a pen and a notebook, where she keeps track of her weekly expenditure at a different department store, because retired kings also have to keep an eye on the little ones.
She wears sturdy walking shoes, a sign that she sometimes gets some fresh air and that after the conversation will undoubtedly plan again.
Albert wears comfortable home shoes, which, if we were to be disrespectful, we might call brothel sliders, when they are just leather moccasins.
Delphine tilts her head slightly. By nature, I read on the internet, people tilt their head when they are fascinated by something. “It’s also a way of flirting with girls.” Not surprisingly, Paola is ready to chase Delphine back up the steps with one punch. Only come in and that is already flirting, it is unbelievable.
You sit in a cozy living room, with photos, sculptures, paintings, some porcelain flowers and ivory figurines. The latter is probably a legacy of the great grandfather.
The photo is a snapshot and, as a blind person can see it, it is not of gigantic quality. Everyone insists on it, but that’s about it. There was no time for thorough preparation in terms of light and composition, so that Paola and a few designer lamps in the background are somewhat overexposed.
Don’t be fooled: that too is an approach of the crafty communication service, which suggests with the photo that taking it was an inspiration of the moment. “And if we took a picture, dear Delphine? ” “But yes, my father, why not?”
“Delphine Boël (right), now Delphine of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, informally meets her biological father King Albert II (center) and Queen Paola,” says the byline accompanying the photo, but in English, before in case one would not know the main characters.
Apparently, there is another deaf postman who has not yet read about this miraculous reunion in Vladivostok, behind the container park. Their seven-year legal battle was world news, and so is their reconciliation. After suffering, it is time for forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, the press release says.
Only after seven years of war do the know-it-alls, who are more angry that things have turned out all right, than anything else. Moral Superiority: It’s a strange thing.
You can always start over. Herman van Veen sang it and the great thing is that it seems to work here too.
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