Let’s get ready to royal!

Nope. No idea. Is that Ed Sheeran?

So, you’ve successfully set up home beneath a rock. Congratulations. You therefore haven’t heard anything at all about the forthcoming royal wedding.

For the rest of us, it’s been a pretty relentless week of news about Harry getting hitched. Mis-hearing it, I initially thought the 5th in line to the throne was preparing to marry Angela Merkel, which was somewhat surprising, as she’s already married (for starters).

But no, the bearded Prince is preparing to say “I jolly well do” to American actress, Meghan Markle. Just to put the icing on the wedding-cake of news overload that ensued following the announcement, the BBC website even has a running stream of updates featuring both actual news and fascinating insights and opinions on the hottest topic of the week.

In hindsight, I should have used some inverted commas around two of those items: ‘News’ is somewhat pushing it, when it’s basically the same bits of information endlessly re-played in slightly different ways. ‘Fascinating insights and opinions’ can only be considered true if someone drawing the happy couple in the dirt on the back of a van is your idea of interesting, you’re big into taking a royal wedding quiz to test your knowledge, or the fact that it was mentioned on Eastenders is the sort of thing that brightens your lonely existence.

By Tuesday, the excitement levels were really ramping up, with news that the wedding will take place at Windsor Castle, in May, hitting the headlines. Oh goody – it might coincide with my birthday!

There’s no actual date yet, so no doubt that will also be front page news. Probably followed by another round of media fever when they actually say what time, too.

Still, as the big day is only around six months away, it’ll give us plenty of time to revert to type and dig up as much dirt on Ms Markle as possible, talk endlessly about the wedding dress, go all weirdly xenophobic about the fact that she’s not British, discuss interminably who the bridesmaids will be, and start an office sweepstake on how long it will be before the next Royal Baby announcement gets Nicholas Witchell all over-excited and extra-fawning.

Sadly, one immediate disappointment of the forthcoming Royal nuptials has already been confirmed – Downing Street has said there won’t be a bank holiday to mark the occasion. Still, May already has a couple. Perhaps they could bung one in during July, as a special treat for all of us. We promise solemnly that we’ll stay in and watch the whole shebang again on TV, honest.

Right. It’s back to the Wedding feed for me: They’re going to visit Nottingham? Wow! Memorabilia companies are rubbing their hands with glee? Gosh! Some quite posh residents of Windsor have welcomed the news? Cor – I’d never have guessed! The American media are already calling her “Princess Meghan”? Hah! They’re funny!

On second thoughts, is there any space under that rock? Come and find me in June.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in The Mail, on the 1st of December 2017. The version used on their website was re-titled as "Right royal fuss over wedding"... dunno about the print edition, as it hasn't arrived yet!

The online version appeared in their Opinion section for the first time in months... presumably because I actually expressed an opinion about something for a change. I should try that more often.

Which reminds me, I haven't told you about the big decision I mentioned a few weeks ago. That'll be because I haven't made one yet. As anyone who follows me on Twitter will have possibly spotted, I'm pondering giving up the column. Crikey, and all that...

(CD A-Z: The Best of Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime. And she was!)

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog