Not The Royal Wedding

So, how was the Royal Wedding for you? As you can imagine, it held absolutely no interest for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the extra day off work and I hope it all went well for Prince Whatsisname and Kate Thingy, (I never can keep track of who those involved are). The fact is that I don't like weddings at the best of times - most of my friends and acquaintances have finally realised that I really won't be offended if they don't invite me to their weddings, it saves all embarrassment of me having to make up an excuse as to why I can't come, which we all know is patently false - so why on earth would I want to spend most of the day watching the wedding of complete strangers? As for those Royal Wedding street parties - well, I didn't notice any taking place in my street. Which doesn't mean, of course, that there wasn't one. I wouldn't put it past my bloody neighbours to organise such a thing and neither tell me about it, nor invite me. Not that I'd want to be invited, but it's just the principle of the thing, you understand.

That said, I didn't spend the day in denial that the event was actually happening, as I'm sure many people did. My late father was far more of a republican than me, and went out of his way to avoid all Royal celebrations. I remember a family outing to the beach at the Silver Jubilee in 1977, which meant we missed the local street party. I have no recollection of the Charles and Diana wedding a few years later. I suspect another family outing or function was involved. The only Royal event I actually went out of my way to avoid as an adult was the funeral of Princess Diana. I remember that I drove down to the New Forest on the morning of the funeral. The roads were deserted and, in the 1978 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 I owned at the time, I did the ton on the steep uphill section of dual carriageway as you leave Romsey for Ower. It was very satisfying - the 5.7 litre V-8 under the hood didn't even break a sweat. As Princess Di had spent part of her honeymoon at Broadlands in Romsey, I dedicated the moment to her, as the Princess Diana Memorial Speed Run. After all, her car was probably doing about the same speed when it crashed in that Paris tunnel.

But today, I just couldn't be bothered to put myself out to avoid the Royal Wedding. I decided that I could not watch it in the comfort of my own home just as easily as I could by going for the day. I sometimes think it odd that, although probably more left-wing than my father, I don't share his fervent hatred of the Royal Family as symbols of our archaic class system. At the end of the day, I just can't be bothered wasting my time on them - they may have the wealth and hereditary positions but, in truth they have no real power. Consequently, they are irrelevant and not worthy of my attention. So, instead of watching the wedding, I've spent most of the day working on my fabled revamp of The Sleaze. Yes, it's finally happening! I've started moving the back catalogue of articles over to a database on a Wordpress installation. Sadly, as I'm having to do this manually, one story at a time, it is incredibly time-consuming, and progress is slow. However, today I felt that I really made some progress. That said, the relaunch of the site is still some months away. But it is finally underway, thanks to the Royal Wedding. So three cheers for the happy couple!