Nostalgia Trip: The wedding

Sadly, I was not wrong. I had hoped that I might have been, but had known that this would be a forlorn hope. My solace is that I had been right.

Street parties there will be. Union flag bunting there will be. The inevitable charity event will coincide. The British at play, doing what the British do, which is to organise, so long as the organisation involves tea and cake, probably a tombola and the imploring of God to save the Queen and to wish the newly-weds a long life.

I am not anti-monarchist. I am royalist agnostic and royalist apathetic. The British royal family means little, except as the source of occasional amusement. The Queen, who has now assumed the role of the British nation’s favourite grandmother, one handed down in true hereditary fashion from the previous holder of the title, has always been there. Of the royals, she offers a certain comfort. I have never not known there to be The Queen. Like some old LP disc, you know she’s around somewhere, stashed in the loft, gathering dust, but she can always be dragged out in some act of nostalgia.

The Queen and the royals and I go back a long way. When I was small, we used to be ushered to the end of the school lane once a year so that we could wave our little flags as Her Majesty rode past in the royal Bentley en route to the passing-out parade at Sandhurst. Mothers would wear flowery summer frocks and hats, as though they were attending the village fête, rather than standing on a roadside for a few seconds of Liz in her limo.

Some years later, I found myself in the inner sanctums of royalty, the palaces of Kensington and Buckingham. On leaving school, I worked for Johnson Wax, which was by appointment and which had the gig for polishing the floors. Of the various royals who I encountered, only one – who wasn’t really a royal anyway – seemed to have a lot going for him. Snowdon. He was grounded enough to take the time to explain the workings of his glass-blowing that had created a phantasmagorical peacock that hung from one wall of his workshop and also to insist that the head-housekeeper gave the “men” Fremlins beer to drink, rather than tea.

But this was all a long time ago. It is nostalgic, like the royal family itself. And with time has come an indifference, one that is so profound that I have no particular feelings about the merits or not of having a royal family. They’re all generally harmless enough, and a proneness to wackiness makes them, on balance, an institution worth persevering with.

Except, of course, Kate and Wills aren’t wacky. Well, not yet anyway. They are unremarkable enough that I can’t even manage to form an impression of Kate in my mind. I don’t know what she looks like. It was never like this with Diana. As a couple, they are bland and distinctly middle of the road. They are royalty that has been focus-grouped; uncontroversial and uncontentious, the New Labour of a “Daily Mail” brand of monarchy.

I would feel the same wherever I was, but in Mallorca there is an additional feeling. It is a sense of unease at displays of overt Britishness or Englishness, of nationhood in a foreign land that comes no more assertively than through Rule Britannia or God Save The Queen and scattering her enemies and making them fall, confounding their politics and frustrating their knavish tricks. The wedding and the street parties are the nationalistic refinement of the British to the more common lack of refinement of the football shirt and “England till I die”.

There is a further sense of unease. That the street party is all an act of nostalgia, one of Brooke, the church clock at ten to three and there still being honey for tea. The meadows of Grantchester on the tarmac or terraces of Mallorca. Like a village fête transported hundreds of miles and transported through time with little union flags and mothers in flowery dresses.

But then, in years to come, some will look back and remember the street party for His Royal Baldness and the woman whose face I don’t know. They will remember a knees-up and standing to attention. How wonderful it all was. A little bit of Britain in Mallorca; and they will look back with nostalgia. And, you know, it might even be fond.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Taking To The Streets: The royal wedding

When the Great News was announced, one’s first thoughts were: ah, yes, the street party. That rare and strange event when the British indulge in some old-time knees-up. Chas ‘n’ Dave, the hokey cokey, Union Jack hats, triangular flags hanging across the road, plates of banana and cucumber sandwiches, family-sized bottles of lemonade, lashings of ginger beer, huge urns of tea, standing and singing the national anthem, comments as to how beautiful she is and how handsome he is, comments as to what a shame she is not there to see it, comments as to how proud she would have been of him, comments as to why is she there, the other one, comments as to how drunk will the brother get later, comments as to it’s the sort of thing the British do well, comments as to do you remember other street parties …

1977. The Queen’s Silver Jubilee. A recreation ground in the north of England. Beer tents, a brass band, whippet-obedience competitions. A group of university sorts has been taking the waters. Many of them. Another group, of local sorts, squares up. Oh what fun. How to celebrate Her Majesty, with the echoes of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen” somewhere in the background along with an ailing British economy, a rocky pound and a handout from the IMF the previous year.

1981. Charles and Diana. It is the end of July. You have returned from holiday, having been shocked at the sight of a shaky television broadcast on a Greek island in which Thatcher is addressing the nation. You have returned to expect to find the streets ablaze and houses razed to the ground. How to celebrate the heir to the throne and the greatest marital sham of all time. And somewhere in the background is the sound of The Beat’s “Stand Down Margaret” and The Specials’ “Ghost Town” with its gloomy prescriptions of economic and urban decay, violence and racism.

Thirty years on and it’s the turn of Kate and Wills. Or Kate and Guillermo as the Spanish press insist on referring to them. With Enrique doing the embarrassing speech, filling the Bentley’s hub-cabs with nails and attaching empty Heinz cans to the rear bumper, and Carlos probably giving not a moment’s thought to thirty years previously. Isabel will be there, too, thinking ahead to the street parties for fifty golden years.

The parties of little Englands and little Britains on the streets of Mallorca. Trestles and tombolas. Special deliveries of John Smith and Tetleys. Someone has to organise the catering. Someone has to organise it all. There will be a committee, as there always is a committee. The British are masters and mistresses of forming two things – queues and committees. There will be a jazz band, as jazz bands there always are. But there will be no sound of the Sex Pistols. Posters of Kate and Guillermo will have been despatched from blighty. Grinning and loving big hair and a lack of hair adorning walls of the streets, held in place with sellotape. Something will have been arranged for charity because the British can’t gather without arranging something for charity. Speakers will be turned up to hear the words spoken. A hush will descend. I do, and we all do. We British.

Tears will be shed, isn’t she lovely, isn’t he handsome. Once more the comments will be made. And some special Spanish friends will have been invited. Smiling and altogether confused by the fuss and not knowing whether they should stand when the national anthem is played yet again. The Tetleys will have been flowing sufficiently for some raucous, football-terrace-style, passionate belting-out of “The Queen”. The day will have become warm enough for the singers to have discarded t-shirts and to display bellydom and body designs. Spanish neighbours will rest themselves on balcony railings and stare down blankly. The local police will hang around, observing through their sunglasses and starting to get agitated as they check their watches, the rules for permissions and the distance that the trestles are from the walls.

As the day turns into evening and as the tables are taken down and packed into the back of a white van and the drunks head off to the curry house or to the all-you-can-eat-for-six-euros chinky, the street party will be hailed as a great success. The newly-weds will be preparing for their luna de miel in wherever it is that they are celebrating it. The toasts for them will die away, but a warm feeling will persist. Of little England and little Britain in the warmth of Mallorca, while back in blighty there is the chill of an ailing economy and a rocky pound and where the streets fill with different types of event, like a quarter of a million heading for Hyde Park.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Party Hats With The Coloured Tips: Cati and Guillermo

“Guapa,” she said, pointing to the front-page photo. Eagerly I parted with the euro that secured my souvenir “Bulletin” with its front page of the happy couple and hurried home in order to frame it and place it alongside other treasured royalist memorabilia – the Prince Edward gundog-smiting walking stick and the Queen Mum gin bottle.

“Guapa?” Hmm, maybe. Kate seems unfortunately to be growing to resemble one of those crazed women of the American right – plenty of teeth, big-hair-lite and light in other departments quite possibly. Who was the bloke with her? Cheesy grin and balding. Ah yes, him. You know you’re getting old when you can remember the footage of Wills’ first day at posh prep.

It must be something to do with the fact that the Spanish are to blame for “Hello”, all air-head celebrity, yachts and pink living-rooms with pink old dames in the mode of Barbara Cartland, were she still with us. This and their having their own royals. The Spanish José Public is already gripped with wedding fever; the Spanish media by Lady Di comparisons and the relative claims on guapa-ness between Diana, Kate and Spain’s own Letizia.

There is a curious protocol within the Spanish media that makes the British royals Spanish. For the time being, Kate remains Kate. She’s not been Catalina-ised or Cati-ed. Yet. The rest of the “firm” has been Spanished. William is not William. He is Guillermo. The old man is Carlos, grandma is Isabel and, most bizarrely of all, little bro’ is Enrique. Why do they do this? It’s not as if the British press turn the Spanish king into a one-time Leeds United and Welsh centre-half-cum-centre-forward: John Charles. There again, there is the obstinate British media refusal to recognise that Zapatero is a president. Has to be something about republics versus democratic monarchies. At least I have always presumed this to be the reason for Zapatero being a prime minister in British eyes.

I don’t know if Zapatero has sent his best wishes to the happy couple, but he’ll probably be schmoozing up to Dave at the next EU shindig in the hope of an invite. But would he pass the Dave royal test? Unlikely that he’s the sort who would have camped out overnight in order to be first to lob some royal confetti. I knew there was a reason for thinking that Dave was a dork, and now I know what it is.

But one imagines that Felipe and Letizia will already have their names being inscribed onto the seating plan, thus sending the Spanish media into a frenzy of further Kate comparisons. Our princess is better than your princess sort of thing. In fact something of the sort had already started before the great announcement, the Italian paper “La Repubblica” having put the cat among the royal pigeons by suggesting that Letizia was heading Di-wards. Marriage not as good as we thought. Looking rather thin and bored. To the rescue has come the King’s sister who has declared that Letizia is better than Di and a whole lot smarter. Which wouldn’t be difficult.

To be fair, Letizia is a whole lot smarter. She did a proper day’s work for a kick off, unlike Diana, unless you count her time at the nursery school when the kids were teaching her the times table. Now though we have Kate to add to the mix, and the question as to whether she has actually had a proper job or not.

Mercifully though, the Spanish press is not totally sycophantic when it comes to the royals, other countries’ royals that is. One “sketch” of the Kate-Wills declaration to the world suggested that all that was missing was Lord Reg of Pinner in the corner playing the piano. What would he have been performing though? “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”, “Sacrifice” or “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”? The latter perhaps. One thing the Spanish press hasn’t cottoned onto is the possibility of the honeymoon being in Magalluf.

Were Majorca to be the location for the couple’s “luna de miel”, it’s more likely they would be handed the keys of Marivent or accompany Felipe and Letizia on the royal yacht and water in Portals, that oasis of Mallorcan authenticity according to Louise Redknapp. But if not the honeymoon, then what about the stag do? Presuming that Harry – sorry Enrique – gets the best man gig, then Maga could well be on the cards. A spot of balcony diving, a night out at Benny Hills and then onto BCM to rub shoulders with Frank Lampard in the VIP lounge. And party supplies courtesy of the Middletons’ company – balloons with the featherlight touch and party poppers that pop in the night.

But sadly, this is likely to only be a dream. Kate and Wills will honeymoon somewhere else, the Spanish press in tow with their long-range zooms along with the rest of the world’s media. Yes, we have all of this to look forward to. And even if there is to be no Mallorcan honeymoon or stag do, we can also look forward to little bits of Britain come the great day. Street parties, Union Jacks, God Save The Queen and party hats with the coloured tips. But so much for what the Spanish will be organising, what about the Brits?

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.