Honoured

Reading JG Ballard's quite amusing reasons for not accepting a CBE - 'I might have been tempted had I been entitled to call myself Commander Ballard - it has a certain ring. I could see a yachting cap and a rum ration as perks of the job.' - I thought of a situation where it would be quite apt for him to accept one. In the unlikely event of the honours system being changed in the near future to not be connected to the Empire, he'd be a very good choice as the person to accept the last CBE or whatever. There'd definitely be something Ballardian in being the last person to receive an honour of that sort. It would be one of those epochal moments of the end of a system, the breakdown of a way of life that features so often in his novels.

Reading the list of people who've turned down honours is quite interesting as well. There are a lot of people on there who you'd expect or have heard about - I mentioned Albert Finney turning one down a few weeks ago - but who would've expected Peter Alliss, the epitome of a golf club bore, to have turned one down?