The Royal wedding frenzy, or 'I took her up somewhere nice'
The voice of the TV presenter is almost hysterical.
What is going on? What is happening?!!!
We can see some people from the helicopter...they are entering the building! Yes...they have entered the building! What does that mean???!!! We don’t know?!
You might think this might be related to something serious. For example, 500 people killed in Syria. But no, of course not! The main focus today is on the Royal wedding event tomorrow.
Oh, look they are leaving the building! Prince Harry is sitting on the right. Kate is sitting on the left!
Wow. That is some major news. Wait a minute, what is this crazy excitement in the crowd? Oh, yes. Prince Harry waved from the back seat of the car!!!
The whole royal wedding hysteria is starting to really annoy me now. It is not even the wedding itself that is my problem. It is everything that surrounds the event. The other morning, on the Breakfast programme, some woman was talking for ages about the fake photographs they were working on, staging pretend wedding scenes. Why?
'Did it take you a long time to find someone who looked like Kate Middleton?' she was asked and oh yes...it took hours to set up, it took amazing efforts from the make-up artists....to create fake dancing scenes with the Queen and David Beckham. I mean, seriously?
As my father summarized the other day over the phone, when I tried to explain that we had a day off, and there will be street parties all around our little village.... ‘But why do you care?’
I have no idea.
Okay, there are a lot of pro-Royal family people in the UK. I personally am not. Neither am I against them, really. I just don’t care enough to feel strongly either way. I can understand when Husband gets annoyed at them. Because, you have to remember that the private jet Prince Andrew took to visit his mate in Azerbaijan was paid by the taxpayers (£60,000), as well as the security provided to escort the Royals from their regular drunken debauchery at night clubs. As far as I can tell, there isn't any obvious use out of the inbred bunch. They are not even that good looking. They are not even English. Tourism? I bet London will have enough tourists looking at the Buckingham Palace, even if it stood empty. So no, I am definitely not seeing what their value is. But really, I understand they are here already. As I point out to Husband, this is just life. Life is not fair or reasonable. If it were not them, there would be some other useless bunch we’d have to subsidize. They are like expensive pets you can’t really afford, but can't get rid of, as it would be cruel.
Syria does get mentioned on the news. But the main problem seems to be the sulking Labour MP’s. They were pissed off that neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown got invited to the wedding, whereas “some quite dubious people” and “representatives of repressive regimes” have been. Lots of toys got thrown out of the pram.
Speaking of which, I don’t think the Azeri president, despite his alleged friendship with the groom’s uncle, got invited. Hello? Why is that? Is he not dubious or repressive enough?! That is just not on, if you ask me.
But the most shocking news came from my New York girlfriend last night. Naively, perhaps, I thought that the whole craze about this wedding was mainly inside the country. But, no. My friend took a day off work and is having a proper English breakfast party at her place, with her parents, sausages and bacon, and Pimm’s and Lemonade.
'Are you serious?' I asked and she said but of course, it was a major, major, major event!
What the hell is the matter with you all, I wanted to ask. What the hell is the matter with this huge crowd on telly, camping out on the streets already?
PRINCE WILLIAM (in an interview in November 2010): ‘We've been talking about marriage for a while, so it wasn't a massively big surprise. But I took her up somewhere nice in Kenya and proposed.’
Oh, dear. Things girls have to do to become a princess these days....
PS. Just saw this and could not resist to add....
I must confess I was expecting a post with the subject, spiced up with your peculiar and unique style (which I love, by the way). I was wondering: if here in Peru, where we are struggling with our problems, the royal wedding is all over, how is it being in the UK?
ReplyDeleteNow I have the answer.
Just like you, I care less about the royal wedding (i wish them all the happiness, but that's another thing) and I thought I could be a weirdo because my take on a lot of things is usually way different from others:) The world is struggling with repressive regimes, hunger, poverty and people are busy stuffing their heads with petty things like Kate's wedding dress, wedding ring, who is invited and who is not, whether they will kiss at the altar or not. Seriously. Shallow. No offense to celebrity-royalty obsessed folks out there, just my honest opinion.
ReplyDeleteTo be frank, as a Brit, I am glad to be living in Baku at the moment so I can ignore the whole wretched, annoying affair. It has given me cause to laugh however. Here is a link to my blog on the subject: http://stevehollier.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/william-and-catherine-the-top-five-worst-memorabilia/
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I hope it reassures you that I had no idea there was a wedding, or who the current British royals were. In fact, I can barely be assed to identify the president of my own country. The bumper stickers, the ads on my web browser, and the radio talk shows raving one name over and over do help, but maybe I'd have a better time of it if you'd mention it on your blog. Could you draw a connection between the Whitehouse and something genuinely interesting, like foxes or ugly cars? Or you could tell us how Azeris insult what's-his-name in Russian! That, I would remember.
ReplyDeleteWhat a waste. Someone has to remind American broadcasters about the declaration of independence. It was signed specifically to ensure that Americans don’t have to care about the royal family and their stuffy parties and yet they do it anyway, voluntarily :)
ReplyDeleteNailya - and all your commenters so far - thank you for reminding us that there's still some sanity amongst the wider public. This awful, awful day has demonstrated how absurd the whole charade is. I couldn't care less about the bride and groom (except that, without anyone asking my permission, I pay for him and all his hangers-on and the massive hierarchical edifice built on their existence). So good luck to the couple. But this orgiastic wallowing in the most expensive soap opera imaginable is embarrassing and truly depressing. There are far more important things going on, and equality is light years away.
ReplyDeleteThe chasers are wonderful. Have you seen that
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvH3YQGQwLM
Sofisticos (don't have time to log in:)
The video is deeply ironic and shockingly funny.
ReplyDelete@ Everyone: Glad to see some others dont really get it either.
ReplyDelete@sofisticos: Hmm...I dont understand what that video has to do with the topic here? I am confused.
@Steve Hollier: Yes, I had to add it later as it was too funny.
Both videos were made by the same team. The other video was actually made over three years ago. "The Chaser APEC pranks were a series of comic stunts that targeted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Summit (2–9 September 2007), in Sydney, Australia. They were coordinated and performed by the Australian satire group The Chaser for the television series The Chaser's War on Everything. The most prominent prank was the breach of an APEC restricted zone in the heart of Sydney central business district on 6 September. Julian Morrow directed a fake Canadian motorcade, which was allowed through the restricted zone by police and not detected until Chas Licciardello alighted, dressed as Osama bin Laden". It was said that they embarassed the whole security system. They are really great. Moreover, The Chaser team was to provide its satirical take on the Royal Wedding in a special program on ABC 2 - the broadcaster's alternative digital television channel.
ReplyDeleteBut over the Easter break, news of the program reached the UK, and the ABC was informed it could not use the pictures provided by the BBC and the news agency Associated Press for that sort of broadcast. So we, in Australia, were deprived of some very interesting comments, which could have been provided by clever people.
Sofisticos
@Sofisticos: Thanks for this, it makes perfect sense now. I did not even look who made it so I was totally confused, but it is easy to confuse me these days! :)
ReplyDeleteWell, two wrongs may not make a right, but two lefts will if you're driving on a triangular grid.
ReplyDelete