Red, white and blue

Just in case anyone has been living in a cave recently, we’ve had a royal wedding.

My children and I watched it and my daughter and I celebrated by painting our toenails red, white and blue with some friends, including an 8-year-old boy who when they were 3, wanted to marry my daughter and have 5 children (my daughter was totally in agreement with this). He had it all worked out: they were going to live near Legoland and he was going to go out to work so that she could stay at home and look after the children (until his mum pointed out that might not be what his wife wants out of life).

I was glad the children wanted to watch the ceremony as there was a royal wedding when I was just a little bit older than my daughter which we watched, followed by a street party, and my grandad collected all the newspapers and books — he was a staunch monarchist who stood up for the national anthem even when he was 80 and made us wait for Christmas presents until after the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day.

I loved all the pageantry, which is something we are very good at in Blighty and I was proud that my children had been learning the national anthem at school, even Monster. I loved seeing all those flags waving in London and the party atmosphere. I concur with the rest of the world in thinking that the dress was beautiful, most of the outfits were spectacular and some of the hats were a bit odd. I’m delighted that the rain held off (especially as we had a barbecue in the afternoon with all the participants of our sweepstake-style quiz about the morning’s events). The best bit for my children was the kiss (believe it or not) but there is a lot of talk around here at the moment that if you kiss someone on the lips, you have to marry them. Watch out, 8-year-old boy from paragraph 1!

I was also very proud that in my capacity of professional nitpicker, I didn’t see any grammatical howlers. The only mistake I have seen in the run-up to the wedding was this one on a commemorative mug: