American English dialects are very rich.

My Oklahoma forebears used a number of expressions that are sort of “black.” A’hm fixin’ ta fix dinner. “Liable,” came out lobble. You’re lobble to git in trouble.” Directly” pronounced d’recly and meaning immediately or soon. Ah’ll be there d-recly.

I had a terrible time learning how to spell in school because of such pronunciations.

My maternal grandmother used the expression, “Different ones say,” to mean she had heard some gossip. My Aunt Caroline’s favorite exclamation was, “Well, ah’ll swan.” I have no idea where that came from.

Mother used to say, “It’s a loblolly out there,” meaning it’s a muddy mess.” Turns out, that is an acceptable expression and I have taken to using it myself.

I would love to read a book on the history of some African-American pronunciations and phraseology. Fascinating. And neither right or wrong. Ask. Himself. I think they are based on what they heard their slave owners say. “My mama she come home late.” He hurt hisself. “Gwine-uh” for going to.

It’s interesting to me that I can often tell the color of a customer service rep’s skin when we’re talking on the phone. Does that make me racist?

I have had the same simple printer for about ten years. It pretty much meets all my needs. I did like my old one better. It printed excellent photos on glossy paper.

This one, I use to print out the NY Tims crossword every morning and my church service leaflet every Sunday. That’s about it.

Recently, I wasn’t getting good, clean copies, so I pressed the head-cleaner maintenance option. I got an ominous message saying that printing would not be available until I replaced the maintenance box. It was full.

I had never heard of a maintenance box.

I was clueless. Who new the after ten years and running the maintenance option about once a year I would need to empty the trash, so to speak.

But, of course, you cannot do that. You must buy a new maintenance box.

I researched this online and was able to order his esoteric box, to be delivered the following day.

Indeed it was. It even came with pictorial instructions and included a screwdriver and a plastic ziplock to put the messy old box in.

I did this, but not without first getting black smudge all over my hands.

Right as rain, printing resumed. Learn something new every day.

Next weekend in a kingdom across the sea, there will be a coronation. I’ll watch it. It comes on here in the middle of the night when I am usually in bed wide awake anyway.

No one much thinks monarchies are any use nowadays. Probably never were.

Still, Disney has created generations of little girls who fantasize about becoming princesses, either by being rescued by Prince Charming or by finding out that they were stolen at birth and have been living with the wrong, commoner parents all these years.

The only Disney princesses we had when I was a little girl were Snow White and Cinderella and I certainly did not want to be either one. Ghastly mother figures.

I did, however love to create royal trappings.

When I was ten-years-old, my grandfather died at a very young age. (The rest of my forebears lived for many decades.) Papa Harrison died the month Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. There was no TV in our town then, but we did have lots of magazines with lots of pictures. Life and Look and the Saturday Evening Post, so I knew all about the royal trappings: The orb, the mace, the scepter, the crown.

Mama Harrison had received many potted plants in sympathy. The pots were all covered in colorful foil. We called it tin foil. Foil, whether it was tin or aluminum, was very special in those days. It was not that mylar stuff you get today.  It was real thin sheets of malleable metal.  You could smooth it out and shape it into anything.  And I did.  I was an odd child.

Charles’s and Camilla’s  crowns won’t be made of crumpled foil but of metals and jewels so priceless they will only be brought out of the Tower of London for the occasion.

I can’t bring myself to say “King Charles,” or “Queen Camilla,” not that I’d ever need to.  King Charles sounds like a spaniel to me.  And Camilla will always sound like the woman who made that real princess’s life a nightmare. Or maybe that was Charles.

Amazing how Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, survived for as long as she did. There must have been at least a couple of times when she “closed her eyes and thought of England.”

Her younger son, the heir-presumptive, determined not to neglect the mental health of his lady, ran away with her and their children to one of the colonies.  I guess you can say they are shirking their duties. I mean, where are they getting the money to live in Montecito?  That’s certainly where I would want to live if I lived in California. Would I marry a prince in order to do that?