Seeing the Shetland pony in a nearby field this evening after the large horses at the College of West Anglia at the weekend, you might be forgiven for thinking this is a metaphor for Prime Minister Theresa May - diminished after the election. But this would be a slur upon these doughty animals. Their origins possibly go back to the first Celtic and Norse pony crosses millennia ago. The hardy breed was used for pulling carts and plowing. When coal became the fuel of the industrial revolution and women and children were banned from the mines, many Shetland ponies found their way into the mines. So this lucky pony is leading a better life than its forbears. Note the shedding of the winter coat on this pony.
There was another interesting aside on the news about the Queen's Speech to parliament being delayed. One reason given was that there would not be enough time to write the speech on vellum and the ink to dry. Vellum is prepared from calf and other animal skins from abattoirs that would otherwise have landed in a landfill site. It has very different properties to paper, apart from a longevity of over 1000 years under the right conditions.
Vellum is still used for Acts of Parliament in the UK and Ireland. There is only one UK producer - William Cowley http://www.williamcowley.co.uk/. The surface is very smooth and also does not absorb the usual modern inks. When books were handwritten on vellum, the ink of choice was iron gall ink. Oak galls and iron sulphate are mixed in an aqueous solution and allowed to ferment. This releases tannic acids that combine with the iron to produce a pale ink in solution. This ink binds to the protein in Vellum. On exposure to air, the ink darkens to a dark blue black. The binding is almost instantaneous, so you get a mark even if you wipe off the still wet ink. To remove a mistake, you have to scrape off the ink layer. To avoid this, ancient writers would try to adapt the mistake to fit the correction needed.
Nowadays, the Acts of Parliament are printed. From other writers and printers on the web using animal vellum and other smooth, non-absorbent surfaces, it appears that you either have to let the ink dry down to avoid smudging over several days or dust the freshly printed wet ink marks with embossing powder and heating to set.
However, The Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/12/queens-speech-delayed-has-printed-goatskin-paper-takes-days/) reveals that the Queens Speech is actually printed on goatskin paper. Surreally, this is not really goatskin but archival paper guaranteed to last 500 years. A Pack of 10 A4 sheets for £5.95! As with vellum, it also takes time for the ink to dry on this paper.
I (in common with most political commentators on the TV tonight) suspect that the horse-trading and bickering about what is going to be into the Queen's speech will take far longer than the drying time. Politics will delay the Queens speech, not the printing of the Act.
Although there is still a flurry of speculation and manoevering in the Tory party, it looks as if Prime Minister Theresa May lives to rule on another day or possibly longer, after meeting with back bench MPS. 'I got us into this mess, I'm going to get us out of it'. Noises about the direction that Brexit will take continue to rumble - hard, soft or alternative. The present minority government intends to stick to the planned timetable of beginning talks on 19th June. The EU negotiators are still working on the basis of the original document sent by Theresa May, which implied a full exit from European Union. They are just watching the chaos in the UK with bemusement.
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