Through fashionable London the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton is causing confusion. Privately, the snoots of Islington and Notting Hill are no different from the rest of us. They think Kate looks cracking and RAF pilot William would make a fine son-in-law. Is there not always something irresistible, my dears, about a tall, young prince with a chopper?
Yet metropolitan smoothness makes them hesitate. Is royal fever socially wise? Is it ever acceptable for a cool cat in designer denim to wave little Union flags and sing the national anthem? Metro-smoothies fret about expressing their gaiety at this fairytale wedding. They do not want to be reported to Commissar Polly Toynbee. They fear being haunted by the ghost of republican Claire Rayner.
How, in the London of gel-haired mockneys and Will Self wannabes, should an off-the-peg lefty ‘play’ the royal wedding?
1. Matrimony Goes against everything you learned on the knees of your Spare Rib-reading parents. Of dubious value from a tax point of view, too, and so kinda adult. Scary! Unless you are leader of the Labour party, there is no need to panic and get hitched. You can rationalise this wedding as a dynastic-political act which has no wider social significance. That’s what to tell your long-term lover, anyway.
2. Street parties Not as unsound as they might seem. You have a natural horror of mixing with hoi polloi but a street party can mean street cred. They’re retro. Bunting, trestle tables, little paper bowls containing jelly and ice cream — it’s all wildly 1977 Silver Jubilee, with a hint of the Sex Pistols and the Callaghan government. This is a great look just now. The bigger and gaudier the decorations, the better. You can claim you were simply partaking in pastiche.
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