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I am happy to say that I did actually accomplish something over the Easter/Royal Wedding mega-bank holiday other than making catty comments about Princess Beatrice’s hat, namely, an attempt at container gardening. I am a dab hand at killing plants, and those that don’t succumb to my lax attitude towards watering and optimal lighting conditions generally get eaten or trampled by the cats. However, this hasn’t stopped me from spending almost a whole £10 at our local nursery, Growing Concerns, just a short walk along the canal towpath from us. Hell, I’m even its foursquare mayor.
I fully intend to have homegrown tomatoes this year, and I am not going to let a mere technicality like not having our own backyard and a pair of herbivore cats scupper this.
Cat-proof plants.
Every wedding buffet needs a cheese and pineapple porcupine.
As much as I can’t stand the contrived “Oo-er I’m a Brit now” posturing of long-term American expats (alá Madonna in her Guy Ritchie years), there are certain aspects of British life that I’ve unconsciously assimilated: I can make a cup of tea that the natives find acceptable, I’ve become fully accustomed to living without a clothes dryer (when I arrived here in 1995, I thought clothes horses were solely for the purpose of hanging homemade pasta to dry – true story), I can eat Marmite on toast without gagging, I’ve acquired the somewhat less endearing British habit of using profanity as punctuation (“twat” in England is about as offensive as “ass” in the US, but it’s like dropping the c-bomb when spoken in American company), and I find the royals to be boring at best and parasitic at worst.
When my cousin in New Jersey emailed to ask if I was excited about the wedding as she was, I suppressed my urge to buzzkill and duly confirmed that I was indeed looking forward to it, and didn’t specify that “it” was the extra day off. I refrained from grumbling about the fact that the 3-day week between Easter and Wedding Weekend meant that trying to accomplish anything at work only resulted in a server-crashing barrage of out-of-office vacation replies. And don’t get me started on the stack of “Anti-Royal-Wedding” party invites clogging up my facebook invites. (That part I wouldn’t mind so much if 95% were from people I actually know.)
However, trying to pit the cynicism of a handful of trendy liberals against the enthusiasm of 2.4 billion people (24.5 million in the UK alone) is an excercise in futility, so at about 10.30am on April 29th Neil and I tuned in to BBC iPlayer “just to see the dress”. Besides, who can argue with a day of hanging up bunting, putting on a hat, and drinking Pimm’s?
General impressions and highlights:
- The dress was pretty awesome. I could have done without the dippy fashion commentary and that wretched woman shrieking about how excited she was that it was McQueen. I swear for a split second I thought her waters had broken. Vivienne Westwood would have been a surprise. British fashion icon, recently deceased? Not exactly unexpected.
- Princess Beatrice’s bunch of churros, I mean, Hat. I thought it was bad etiquette to try to upstage the bride. Besides, that’s David and Victoria Beckham‘s job.
- Best bit: the little bridesmaid with her fingers in her ears.
After the wedding, Neil and I went to Kaf and Jess’s for a Royal Wedding Patriotic Picnic, where we listened to Elgar and ate finger sandwiches and drank Pimm’s in princely proportions.
A Tudor Ruff made from sheets of photocopier paper: Royal Genius.
Watch out Philip Treacy...
