On being in London for the royal wedding
NO HARM TO the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge but their nuptials were a right royal pain from where I was standing. That is, squashed on the Mall. Toes trodden on by a sea of people who had taken leave of their senses, holding phones above their heads to take pictures and shouting to each other: “I can’t see anything, can you see anything, oh, I can see a shoulder.”
For the record, those of us under six foot couldn’t see much of anything. Apparently it didn’t matter though, because We Were There. We will be able to tell our grandchildren about how our right arm is slightly longer than the other one on account of getting caught in a skirmish near Buckingham Palace involving a fold-up chair and an Australian who had been on the champers since dawn.
The royal wedding brought out the grouch in me, in case you hadn’t noticed. Thank the crown prince of Yugoslavia it’s over. Of course, there is no such country as Yugoslavia any more and there hasn’t been royalty in that geographical area for yonks but that didn’t stop the “prince” and other deposed “royals” scoring invites to the wedding. Blood is blue even if your ungrateful subjects have long since kicked you to the undemocratic kerb.
See? Grumpy to the max. I more than related to three-year-old flower girl Grace Van Cutsem who at one point could be seen on the palace balcony with her hands over her ears wearing a dark expression that seemed to me to say “off with their heads”.
I’d like to blame Catherine of Cambridge and Baron Carrickfergus (Kate’n’Wills), but as usual it’s mostly my own fault. I wandered into Green Park at 7.30am thoroughly unprepared. I didn’t realise that once I got close to the palace I’d be stuck there for seven hours, which is why, when I think about it, I didn’t have any breakfast. “If you leave you can’t get back in,” the burly guard at the barrier repeated as I asked in seven different ways to be granted clemency.
I had nothing. Not so much as a bottle of water or a Carr’s water biscuit. I wouldn’t mind but I had to spend the day watching people consume the entire deli section of Fortnum and Mason. I am talking about a truck load of pork pies, a mountain of cheese and endless cucumber sandwiches. Be assured I did my best “I’m starving, somebody stole my picnic” look, but it made no difference. By the time they appeared on the balcony all I could think when I saw Prince William was that he’d probably be lovely between two slices of granary bread. I looked at Kate and saw chicken bones. It was torture, frankly.
We Were There, though. Most people I spoke to said the same thing. And they also wanted their children, some of whom I spotted sleeping while standing up, to be able to say they were there.
The atmosphere was so uniformly jolly that only one of the people I interviewed noticed I didn’t exactly share their enthusiasm when jotting down their thoughts for this newspaper in my notebook. “Are you not here of your own free will?” a sympathetic young woman asked as I failed to register enough delight that the queen had a blanket on her knees in the Rolls. “Not really, no,” I said in what I thought was a hungry manner as she stuffed her face with some posh crisps, failing to offer me any – so not that sympathetic after all as it turned out. More unkind people than me might have used the word greedy.
By the time William had kissed her twice and driven Kate down the mall in his daddy’s Aston Martin, I was suffering from royal fatigue. And it might have lasted a lifetime had I not, in the following couple of days, had a joyful nostalgic experience courtesy of some dead royal relatives of William’s.
My brother lives in the East End of London, right beside Victoria Park, a majestic sprawling demesne given by Queen Victoria to the locals in 1845. It is being renovated at the moment but it’s still a beautiful place to while away a few hours. And within walking distance is the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, the only museum I know that features a sand pit, a juke box and a dressing-up chest.
Glancing into one glass case I saw a range of the old Fisher Price play family sets and I had a violent – in a good way – flashback of the Garage, an old, much loved childhood toy. Remember the Garage, 1970s children? It had a crank to move the lift up and down, the lift that went Ding! Ding! Ding!, cars that swung down the ramp and all those adorable, round-headed little peg people.
I went home and straight on to Ebay. I am bidding for a previously played with Garage right now. I might not win but I’m grateful to Victoria and Albert for the memory. Catherine and William – lovely people as I am sure they are – not so much.