Royal Seal of Approval
King Charles III visited Blackburn in the last millennium when he was but a mere prince. Here’s what happened.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Once upon a time in the last millennium, a prince was on tour in one of his mother’s dukedoms. He was due to visit Blackburn’s Fishmoor Estate. This led to the local burgomasters going into a panic.
Rumours surfaced about supplies of paint going short and there being no money left to purchase new supplies. This was a headache for the local burgomasters. They wanted to follow the time honoured tradition of decorating an area where a royal visit was going to take place. Charlie’s granny once remarked how everywhere she went smelt of paint. She was right. In many cases it was the only time some places ever received a decent paint job.
So a plan was hatched into how the prince could be navigated through the estate and only see houses which had been spruced up using this limited paint supply. It became known as ‘Operation Yellow Brick Road’. This cunning plan was to produce a route for the prince to walk along. His route would only include houses which had been given a new paint job.
If you lived away from the route – hard luck! No smell of paint for you. A bit like many people think about the royal family these days, the chance of getting your house painted up Fishmoor was about as likely as a fairy tale coming true.
And so it came to pass, Charlie’s visit to Blackburn took place. Up the Roman road to Fishmoor, the Prince of Wales traversed. No Picts, but quite a few Scots lived in this outpost of the empire. As expected, there was a large turnout for the visit of the future king of our country. Somebody joked how they wanted to see the prince before he turned back into a frog. Sounds like they’d had their ear bent by David Icke. Although a frog is an amphibian, not a reptile.
And so Blackburn had its own version of the Truman Show. An invisible bubble had been created around this royal visit, making it totally impregnable to outsiders. Yet it created a familiar situation, where Charlie really wanted to get out and join our world, but isn’t allowed. Whereas ordinary people want to get in and join his world, but cannot. Like most good fairytales, they all lived happily ever after.
