Royal Wedding Build Up Post No. 1


I remember the day  in 1981 when Charles married the freeloader Diana. I had thrown out the telly some years before, I did without one for eight years and it did me no harm, but did manage to watch this 'great occasion,' and well remember bot her mistake in getting her words wrong during the event and his deliberate mistake to make her feel better. I did not question then why a man of his age and intellect, interested in the environment, architecture, world politics, effective charity work, history and art, should be marrying a lass who found anything beyond '19' magazine a 'bit orff.' However I watched the overlong process, endured the fawning commentary, and watched the delightful programme which followed.


It must be said that I remember more about that programme than the wedding. Possibly it is because when you have seen one wedding, and I have seen lots, then you have seen them all. This however was worth watching. It was a long programme to fill in time as most of the nation was waxing lyrical about Diana's dress, her hair, her words, her.....zzzzzzzz so the BBC just shoved on a long documentary about Namibia, or South West Africa as it was once known. This excellent programme covered the vast desert area along the Atlantic coast, including the area known as the 'Skeleton Coast.' This featured many ships that had fallen foul of sea, wind and strange currents and ended up beached along here. Some of the crews no doubt remain here still! This huge country contains a mere two and half million people, and appears to have very little to maintain itself, apart from tourism, agriculture and mining for gold, diamonds and uranium of course! Only Mongolia is more sparsely populated and half the Namibians live below the poverty line, and many of them suffer from Aids!


Aids was of course of little interest in 1981, then it was a disease for the sexually loose still to discover, and this programme ignored such things to concentrate on the wildlife. The wildlife is what really sticks in my mind on that wedding day. Now I appreciate that many of you will associate weddings with a bit of wild life, but a drunken hedonistic evening is not what I have in mind, well actually it is. You see in one part of this divergent landscape there grows a type of fruit, the name of which escapes me, which causes the animals to gather every year. This in itself is not unusual however the cameraman was able to record a fabulous piece of the aftermath. This unnamed fruit falls in abundance and while the greedy elephants, chimps, zebra's and rhino's chomp away merrily the stuff begins to ferment inside them. Shortly after we are left with a gathering of drunken animals. Now in my mind 'drunken animals' brings to mind Rangers and Celtic fans laying waste the land as they pass, as Manchester can confirm, but these drunken animals do nothing of the kind! They just danced! The chimps were seen cavorting around fallen logs, the elephants swinging back and forth and I have a feeling the rhino was dancing. The whole variety of creatures were having a ball and no trouble was captured on this occasion.


However, the morning after was pictured. The rhino sat still and his expressionless face told nothing, but his eyes spoke of headache and weariness. Daddy elephant was not rejoicing and the lion looked somewhat depressed. The chimpanzees glared from red eyes, and this was black and white TV, at the world around them, and all the animals were heard to mutter, "Never again." But I bet they did! 


Anyway Charles put the bint to the use for which she was bought and had two (?) children and dumped her for someone he actually loved. If only he had married her in the first place,what a better life we all would have had!     

Suite 101

Max has asked a pertinent question, "Why do the women all seem to have to wear hats all the time. Is it just a tradition? And do the hats HAVE to be outlandish, or can the also be regular hats? Do earmuffs count as hats?"


Indeed why do people wear hats these days? Does anyone know, or indeed care? In the fifties it became the thing not to wear hats. Generations untold had worn head gear of some sort for whatever reason, and suddenly we were more concerned for our DA haircut and, in the UK at least, happy to get our heads cold and all to often wet in the dreadful weather. Throughout the sixties few but the older generation wore hats. My dad always wore his cap, and kept his good cap in the wardrobe for any special occasion he may have attended. I can recall as a child spending what appeared to be eons in shops while mum tried on hat after hat, each discussed with a wide variety of other women involved in the same event, while my mind froze from boredom. Yet rarely did we wear any form of headgear. There was a fad for army bush hats around 1969/70 but this was a fad, nothing more. Yet about 10-15 years ago I started to wear a cap to keep my head worm in winter, and to avoid the hysterics of others I changed tack and began to wear one of those awful American baseball caps. Since then I, and many others, are never seen without one! Why the change? It is still fashionable for trendy tough guys wannabes to shave their heads and act macho, but so many others wear caps and in times past we would have thought this somewhat unfashionable! Why did we change?


Women of course are always changing their minds , let alone their hats. Fashion comes and goes and hats were always worn for weddings or 'fancy do's,' but not for everyday wear. That appears to have changed. certainly some women look very good in hats, and a few I know would look better in a Yashmak, but that's another story. The days of a headscarf over hair covered in curlers appears to be dead, although it was popular in British films of the early fifties, and a lass is more likely to wear a baseball cap which doesn't suit her because it fits in with those around her rather than something that actually suits. The weather being kind of windy and containing much rain makes it difficult for a self conscious girl to know what to put on her head today. A hat keeps her warm but might fly off and cause embarrassment while it may also spoil her hairdo! A brolly will be chosen even though it will turn inside out, although she will not notice how many eyes she removes with it of course! Hmmm such a choice to make!


For those of you who really wish to know how, and indeed when, to wear a hat you will find advice here on the Suite 101 site. Good luck to you but in this weather I am sticking to my ageing cap.




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