did you get the nod?

imagine being able to invite your 1 900 closest friends to your wedding, then by lunchtime the 1 900 at the abbey will drop to 600 who get lunch with the queen. as night falls, so do the guests, only 300 can stay for dinner.  hopefully by bedtime it will be just billy boy and catherine in their castle in the sky.

i am a sucker for royalty.  diana spencer stole my thunder and got married 4 months before i did in 1981.  once again she beat me to it when bonny prince william was born 6 months before gareth.  she beat me again to a divorce and, mhdsrip, in the one race i did not mind losing to her, she beat me again. 

now the race has started for the next generation and william is first out of the blocks.  i was in london in 1980 when the engagement was announced.  my wonderful grandmother, granny housego (bet you have never heard that surname before? pronouced "howz-e-go") requested tea towels, coffee mugs and postcards of the pending royal marriage.  the tea towels were hung on her walls (next to the 3 flying ducks), the postcards were put into photo frames and diana was right there in her display cabinet (ball and claw with the mirrors and glass)

framed like family alongside gordon mullholland of the villagers and cliff "honky tonk" jones (who once gave her a signed postcard of himself).  just as well, in a way, that she died before diana because diana's death would have hastened her demise.  she struggled through elvis's death 20 years before that and sobbed whenever she heard "love me tender" on the "wireless"  - she was the granny who even cried while listening to her radio soapie "the whiteoaks of jalna" (you must remember that one on springbok radio - "the whiteoaks of jalna, from the novel by mazo de la roche, adapted for radio by darryl silverstone").

i have been sidetracked - this is not about my granny but about the royal wedding.  i am getting old and sentimental - it is the first summer that i have reminded myself of my grandmother by complaining of the heat.  i never thought the day would come when i would look forward to the last days of summer but this summer it has happened.  perhaps "the ex-bf's" comment about only having "10 good summers left" may come back to haunt me.  sorry off the subject.... getting so old and sentimental that i have actually requested that the busiest brother bring me a few souvenirs home in june.

don't you love this one?

will look so good hung in my study between nick faldo and lawrence dallaglio (my favourite english sportsmen who my boys (including michael) can't stand, but they still buy me their biographies).

back to the wedding.  bestest sister is having a wedding party.  we are going to have to wear a hat (my worst), eat cucumber sandwiches and drink gin out of her royal doulton tea cups (have to take 'em cups out sometime). 

still hoping that the boss is going to agree to close the office early next friday.