Royal Wedding: Aftermath

As the street cleaners make their way around the Palace, the port-o-potties are packed up, and the Royal Gardeners try to extract whatever is left of the completely flattened plants around Buckingham, English chins are wagging, recounting the highlights and horrors of the day.

I happened to have a hair appointment at 11am  in Hammersmith (or Hammersmif as you sometimes hear.)  The salon was abuzz with Wedding chit-chat, punctuated by hair-dryers and scissor snips.  My stylist, Sam, loved the ceremony and thought it was a magical day.  The septuagenarian next to me reminded us that the couple is on the older side for royal weddings.  While Charles was older, Diana and Elizabeth were both 20 when they wed.

Everyone was puzzled about Princess Beatrice's hat.  Antlers?  Unicorn?  Reindeer?  What was that?  She and her sister Eugenie in the blue and purple puffy dress looked more appropriate as backup singers for Lady Gaga or Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.  I mean, I'm certainly one for an outrageous hat, but that crossed the line even for me.  Ah well.  What is a Royal occasion without scandal?

After the salon, I made my way over Hammersmif Bridge and onto the Thames Path where I grabbed lunch at the Blue Anchor, a local pub since 1722.  Sitting outside, I could hear the Australians next to me discuss what was up with that kiss?  Either of them.  They felt they were short and lacking in passion.  They had higher expectations.  But perhaps it wasn't so much lack of passion as it was discomfort with PDA, with extra P.

On the tube, passengers scanned an assortment of papers, all with the kiss on the cover.  Back in Islington, I stopped at the newsstand to purchase one of the commemorative editions.  A lady came up and, clearly bored already, noted that everything was about the wedding.  She gave a disgusted tut-tut as I reached across her to get a copy of the Daily Mail.  She was too well dressed for an anarchist, so let's just assume she was simply bored.  As the reports from the electricity grid confirm, that put her in a small percentage of the population.  There was a power surge after the ceremony, 4th largest of all time, indicating that people stopped watching TV and did something else - like boil a kettle.  I know that sounds cliche, but it is actually a planned event here in England.  After a major TV event, such as an important football game, there are always power surges that indicate people are taking a tea break and it is also used in the metrics of how many people were actually watching.  Take that, Nielsen Ratings!