Saturday 30 April 2011

That wedding business

Well, it really was a good do. This was the first royal wedding at which the couple committing matrimony were young enough to be my children and I think that affected my view of the whole affair. The previous two, Andrew and Charles, were marriages of people of my general vintage and so I thought what I thought (but rarely said) at friends' weddings - don't do it you bloody fool. Everyone knows that, at least for ordinary folk, there are only two consequences for a man who marries, he gets less sex and more nagging. When you see someone of your age plunging into the pool of perpetual frustration that is married life you think you should be able to persuade them of the folly of their ways. You can't do that with a generation above or a generation below, the former call you a whippersnapper and the latter tell you to fuck off. That means I was just an observer and felt I had no personal iron in the fire.

The whole thing was done terrifically well. We might not be able to get much right in this country these days but we are bloody good at pomp and ceremony. There was something quaintly pleasing about the simple act of people dressing up in their finest to attend at the big church. Of itself that made it special. I witnessed the effect of dressing up many years ago. It was a boring Friday at work, everyone seemed miserable so I rounded up my closest friends there and invited them and their co-duvetees to dinner at FatBigot Towers the following evening - and I issued a black tie dress code. My then pupil (apprentice barrister) wasn't sure whether I was serious but duly attended with his young lady in appropriate attire, as did all other guests. I don't know how many dinner parties I had given before involving most of the same people, but this one was different right from the beginning. The only change from normal routine was that the chaps were in black tie and the gals in ball gowns yet it made a massive difference to the whole atmosphere of the evening. It turned a dinner party into an event. So it was today when we saw female guests trying to out-hat each other and males trying to be as penguinlike as possible. Even the old queen was dressed properly, as was his friend Mr Furnish.

Eveyone was in place, Her Maj looking a real treat in a fantastic yellow number, then it was time for the bride to appear and expose her frock. I can claim no specialist knowledge of frocks but it looked like a pretty well-cut piece of kit. The usual ooohing and aaahing from the crowd accompanied her arrival and the irritating television commentary gave loads of meaningless details about the dress itself, but no one said what seemed most obvious to me. Her outfit was rather, hmmmm how can I put this, well, it seemed distinctly nipply. The girl herself is not endowed with a particularly noticeable bosom so it might be it was a design feature to make people concentrate on something other than the generally fried-eggish nature of her mammarial area. And it did, all I could think was nipples; nipples nipples nipples. Not a word on this seems to have passed from the mouth or keyboard of any other commentator, so it might be I am just a pervy old saddo, but I'm right.

The Duchess of Nipples did not prevent me noticing how much fun the crowd was having. Perhaps it was enhanced by the generally miserable mood of the country at the moment, but it was clear that hundreds of thousands of people were having a really good time. I look forward to George Galloway announcing his conversion to monarchism, after all he has argued for years that a crowd of 250,000 on an anti-war march was proof that the war in question was misguided, now he will feel compelled to argue that a million or so people cheering the House of Windsor justifies the existence of the monarchy for many years to come.

What we saw today, of course, was the normally silent majority in action. People who wouldn't dream of going on a march or urinating on war memorials but are prepared to display that happiest of civilised traits - taking pleasure in the pleasure of others. We just have to hope that the Duchess of Nipples doesn't turn out to be a manipulative publicity seeking tart with shit for brains like her husband's late mother. Time will tell. For now we can just smile and remember a very pleasing day.

And the nipples.


6 comments:

Leg-iron said...

It's probably very sad, but as an old biologist my first thought on seeing that waist was 'You'll never get thirty feet of intestine in there'.

I redeemed myself with my second thought, which was 'nipples'.

john miller said...

An uncharacteristically earthy post.

Mind you, if it was written at 03:21 I'm not really suprised...

Hmm, WV "giver", to which one can only add, int he spirit of things, "one"

Anonymous said...

If I'd realised there were going to be nipples I would have watched!! Bah! :(

Anonymous said...

Despite the idea that this wedding brought the royal family into the 21st century etc., I think we caught a glimpse of Britain as it used to be, and it was nice. A minimum of slebs, utter good taste in everything from start to finish, not a logo in sight, half the country watching the BBC, and no Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. It was as though New Labour had never happened (bet they wish they hadn't scrapped the royal yacht now, don't they?!).

Woman on a Raft said...

Brides are notorious for losing half a stone in the week before a wedding and making the clothes loose. Consequently, one of the reasons for the popularity of the wedding dress based on a laced bustier or corset is that you can make final adjustments with the lacing.

The Japanese have some interesting designs where you set the corset up and then use the quick-exit concealed zip to get in and out of it in minutes rather than half an hour.

H.R. said...

I was concerned that someone would get their eye poked out, but all went well and no one was injured.