Countdown to the next royal wedding, part one.

I have held my counsel, missus, long enough about the forthcoming orgies of self-indulgence. I have to admit that my heart was not in the prospect of the endless cycle of email messages from all of you asking about whether there was any way that I could get an invitation for you.

Now that the missives have been despatched, it is too late. (Philip was on the telephone four times this week, complaining about having to seal the envelopes. I said “It’s the economy, old baboon, we’re all having to cut back. No self-seal envelopes except for the very rich and recklessly careless”. Actually, now that he can no longer be left unsupervised, even for ten minutes, they have to invent activities for him. Camilla reckons that he has licked in excess of 47,000 envelopes these two weeks, while the Duke of Kent was in the next room steaming them open, and the Duchess reapplying the glue. Once they got a barrow-load, one of the under-footman would wheel them back round to Philip).

You have not been invited, and your presence is not required. Call me cruel for being so blunt, but there it is.

Fear not, I shall not be attending either. I have given my tickets to the in-laws of Mr Protheroe at number fifty-six. He (the in-law, that is) suffers from Tourettes and his wife from chronic flatulence. Again, you might think me cruel, but you have no idea how badly my hibernation has been affected by the constant wailings of these people, all labouring under the huge misapprehension that I gave a shit.

Even my most avid admirers would have tired by now had I inflicted the daily round of nonsense upon you. Some bastard even gave young Katherine my number. To say that she is brighter than the average addition to the Saxe Coburg Gotha clan is hardly a compliment. A scratched and defaced hatstand would raise the mean IQ. I have had my first conversations with her, gawdelpus, and I will not fatigue you with the details. I have had previous dealings. I wrote her dissertation for her degree – they felt that it would be unseemly for a future queen to fail a course in the History of Art. This was not as easy as you might think, as I had to tone it down. No one would have believed it had she got a first. I expect that within a few years my references to Constable being a professional racing cyclist and the strange prandial activities of Claude Monet will find their way into Wikipedia, if not serious academic tomes.

More of young Ms Middleton later. More too, or perhaps ”more on” would be more appropriate, of the dreadful Zara. I am torn as to whether to tell her that my telephone is not equipped to receive ‘text’. I do not see why, at my time of life, I should feel compelled to learn a new language. The alternative is only slightly better, if at all, I get woken at all hours by someone whose job it is to convert the ‘texts’ into a spoken form. It makes no more sense, and is delivered in stilted and error-strewn English; you will not be surprised that it has led to appalling nightmares centring on the subject of “the best man’s speech”.