Prologue to the Royal Wedding
Thursday 27th April:
In this, the cruellest month, we have been showered not so much by rain as by a mounting hysteria about the forthcoming royal wedding. Pilgrimages, jousting and ferret juggling have been put on the back burner as the nation, from every holt and shires end, apparently holds its breath in eager anticipation. Hectares of newsprint and eons of airtime have been consumed in endless speculation regarding the smallest detail. Who will make the frock? What will the prince wear? Should the prime minister wear tails or a lounge suit? As an armchair anarchist and republican, I’ve tried to avoid most of this, but like toothache, it’s difficult to ignore.
Kate Middleton, the bride, has had her ancestry poured over by experts and appears to be very distantly related to the groom, Prince William. This distance is to be welcomed since the Queen and Prince Phillip are cousins and such couplings have been known to produce unfortunate mutations. Kate’s mother is, we are told, a former British Airways trolley dolly who, with her husband, a former baggage handler, now runs a party supplies company. If, as is normally the case, the bride’s parents are responsible for the reception, then they will be well placed to provide paper hats, feathered blow-ticklers, balloons, bubbles and goody bags for the guests. (One can imagine the Queen in a paper hat blowing bubbles at the grumpy old Duke.) Mrs Middleton might also use her former airline contacts to buy up a job lot of economy in-flight meals. Tackling rubber chicken with plastic cutlery might present some problems however, especially for William’s dad, the Prince of Wales, who usually has his food cut up for him, or pre-minced.
Kate will apparently become a duchess of somewhere or other following the nuptials. The Queen has any number of dukedoms within her gift. Perhaps a nod will be made to the Middleton’s former employment and Kate will become the Duchess of Gatwick (North) or Terminal Five. She will certainly have to learn the royal ropes; speaking like a Thunderbird with hardly a movement of the mouth, trowelling in foundation stones and looking miserable as she lays wreathes on the graves of people she couldn’t care less about. Then there’s the vacuous royal wave. Over the years, the Queen has done this so often that she probably has repetitive strain injury and couldn’t chuck a decent dart even if her life depended on it.
There has been much talk in the press about where the happy couple will go after the wedding for the customary exchange of bodily fluids. It is speculated that it could be Mustique, a log cabin in Canada, or even New Zealand. My bet is that Kate’s mum, using her old contacts, might have done a deal with Ryanair or Easyjet for a package to Torremolinos. On the other, hand, given the current economic climate, they might opt for somewhere closer to home. William’s great-great grandfather, Edward the Seventh, while indulging in serial gluttony and sex addiction, also had a penchant for Bognor. As per royal custom, they will probably breed quite quickly into the marriage. Given the parents’ backgrounds, this could result in some kind of gormless airborne parasite with teeth like a picket fence and early hair loss.
The other question that is exercising the finest minds is where the couple will live out their marital bliss. I imagine that the council housing list in Windsor or Westminster is, like everywhere else in the country, overflowing, so they’ll just have to rough it in one of the royal palaces, manor houses, or moated granges dotted around the kingdom. The upside of this will be, however, that Kate can put her perfectly sensible degree in art history to use, dusting off old portraits of the rakes, despots, adulterers and congenital idiots who make up the bulk of William’s ancestors.
According to the press, very few street parties have been organised to celebrate the wedding, so we might be spared the sight of pearly kings and queens gripping their lapels as they sing and cavort to Boiled Beef and Carrots and The Lambeth Walk. The other departure from tradition is that one or other of the Dimblebys won’t be doing the television commentary. In the past, they have been natural shoe-ins for such events, their reverential tones and grasp of even the most trivial and boring details complementing the gravitas of various state occasions. I learn instead that their role is to be shared between the whining Welsh newsreader, Huw Edwards, and Fiona Bruce, formerly a schoolgirl hockey team captain, but now famed for fanning public greed on The Antiques Road Show.
None of the above matters a jot to me as I shall remain bunkered up in my flat with both radio and television switched off. In preparation for this republican vigil, I visit the minimarket and stock up on some cheese and several bottles of Fair Trade Merlot. The Embryo who used to work at the shop has long since departed on her travels and has been replaced by a middle-aged crone who looks as though she is fresh from central casting at Hammer films. She has slightly bulbous, staring eyes, purple eye shadow and a greenish pallor. Her hair is like a rook’s nest and she has a cackling, wheezy laugh. I’ve named her The Ghoul.
‘You’ve got a lot of wine here,’ she says. ‘You gonna be celebratin’ the weddin’?
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I tell her. ‘Nothing like a good wedding, or a natural disaster, but funerals are my favourite.’
‘Well’, she says, ignoring my sarcasm. ‘If you want some company, you know where I am dearie.’
She cackles and executes a hideous slow motion wink that makes me shudder. I might brandish a crucifix at her the next time I’m in the shop, just to see whether my suspicions about her true origins are correct.
I spend the rest of the day drawing comfort from reading about the French Revolution and listening to some Elgar and B B King.
12.01 am Friday 28th April:
I’ve eaten too much cheese and quaffed too much wine, but at least I’ve avoided hearing or seeing anything about the wedding. It’s a warmish night, so I sit out on my balcony, continuing to polish off the Merlot. In the far distance, London is a faint glow in the night sky. Despite my best efforts to divert myself, I begin to think about the day that is about to dawn. Fuelled by the Merlot and a surfeit of Brie, my imagination begins to click in.
The city mostly sleeps…
Logs of lamb have ceased their rotations in kebabs shops from Cricklewood to Clapham. As the weary shop owners pull down the greasy shutters, cockroaches slowly emerge from wainscotings to take their pickings from the detritus of the day. Squittering Starbucks machines are silent – no more sludgy, homeopathic coffee dispensed till dawn.
In Acton, an alley cat cries for the moon and an urban fox scrabbles at a bin bag in Battersea. Moths and midges, tango in the eerie orange streets lights in Pinnner and Penge and a pickpocket in Peckham flexes his fingers in his sleep.
Grooms and pages, footmen and flunkies have set their alarms and turned in for the night. Batons buffed and tasers charged, The Met is ready to defend liberties; while beneath the streets sewer rats, whiskers a-tingle, sense this will be no ordinary day.
In the Palace, Princess Anne, Bill’s auntie, sleeps with cucumber slices on her eyes and a mudpack on her face, in the vain hope that these will make her look less like the creatures she mounts to jump over hedges. Nearby, Chas and Cams lie entwined in post-fumble bliss, thinking perhaps that being poked with a stick and threatened with decapitation in Oxford Street was just a bad dream.
And Old Father Thames, wearied by centuries of pomp and corruption, continues its way to the sea. And somewhere in town a changeling called Clegg dreams of becoming a man
Dozens of porta-loos line The Mall and are ready and waiting to service the flag-waving dafties camped out for the night. Perhaps their number and capacity will be a little bit of trivia that Huw or Fiona will reveal to a gasping planet.
And so the night wears on. As first light breaks, a solitary blind man taps his way past the Palace and is brought to the ground by a vigilant cop who has seen The Day of the Jackal. Souvenir sellers, ice cream men and periscope vendors take up their positions. The world holds its breath…
The day begins early for the Duke of Edinburgh. It takes some time for his valets to get him into the uniform of a Ruritanian admiral. Once attired he is unable to sit down for fear of buggering himself with the ceremonial sword. Then there’s the smile to be worked on. The Duke is not renowned for being a laugh a minute, so he has a special smile consultant –a bit like George the Sixth’s speech therapist. This hapless lackey will try a few simple jokes and might even do a few pratfalls, or beat himself up with Indian clubs in an effort to amuse. When all else fails, the Duke’s face will be botoxed into the semblance of a smile, which, with any luck, might last until the evening disco.
Elsewhere in the Palace, the curlered Queen takes breakfast and pets a corgi. As she stares into her bowl of muesli, she fancies for a moment that the bran flakes, nuts and dried fruit have formed themselves into the face of Camilla. She gives a little shudder and bemoans the fact that there appears to be a dearth of suitable womenfolk for her male progeny.
So, as the hour of destiny nears, the crowds begin to swell in The Mall and around the Abbey. The armed forces and the police take up their positions. Huw and Fiona clear their throats and check their copious notes. Bandsmen in Chelsea practice their scales and fluff up their busbies. In his schoolboy voice David Beckham sings in the shower, while the pregnant, but still skeletal Posh practices her pouts and flounces and lays out her frocks for the day.
Let the pageant begin…argh!!!
©David Sherrington 2011
