Birth stories.

Yesterday I found myself asking when so many people I know became such ardent royalists. First thing in the morning loads of people were going bananas because Kate Windsor (I suppose that is her name, or is he Kate Cambridge?), Duchess of Cambridge, had gone into labour. She was a lucky lady and three hours later gave birth to a little girl. The twittersphere, the tweetersphere and Facebook went crazy. You would seriously think that they all knew the lady personally. 

This morning one of the tabloids ran the headline "New princess brings joy to William, Kate and the nation!" Well, my first thought was that surely they should have put the baby's mother name at the head of the list. She did the hard work after all. And then, did this little girl really add joy to everyone's life? Judging by the people camping outside the hospital waiting for news, and the vast numbers who took photos of the royal birth announcement posted by the gate of Buckingham Palace, some people apparently need a new princes to make their happiness complete. 

According to Hello Magazine (courtesy of a Facebook friend, I hasten to add, as I only ever look at such magazines at the hairdresser's) "It's been an emotional rollercoaster for royal watchers who have been avidly following the news, waiting to meet the couple's second child. While Kate had said that her due date was around "mid-to-end of April" during a London-based engagement in March, the little Princess wasn't ready to make her way into the world until May." 




People can be really strange!

A very important aspect for Hello magazine was the outfit chosen by her duchessness to wear to leave hospital. This is now tipped to be a best seller. Most of us in her situation wear whatever we can fit into. 

I wonder if William and Kate need to produce any more little royal babies. They now have one of each kind. As far as I know, the isn't another gender. So maybe they can stop now and simply wait for the years to go by until they can become King Bill and Queen Kate. 

Will the birth of a royal child, a princess to boot, give a boost to the Conservative party in the forthcoming election? You never know? All sorts of things seem to affect the way people vote. One more i say, people are strange/

In the Guardian's Family section yesterday there was an article about a family who consider the 3rd of May to be important because, in one of those odd family coincidences, the son of the family was born on that date in 1965, his niece was born on that date in 1998 and the father of the family died on the 3rd of May 2012. Coincidences like a that are strange but my family can beat it. My younger sister was born on my mother's birthday. Our daughter was born on my father's birthday. Her oldest child was born on our son's birthday. And finally, my mother died on my niece's birthday. 

My younger sister has gone through all her life considering herself to be very important for sharing her mother's birthday. Add that to her being the youngest child of four and a left hander as well and you can imagine the self aggrandisement that went on there. Our daughter gets a little sentimental about being her grandfather's best ever birthday present and my niece gets positively maudlin every time her birthday comes around. The only ones who take the coincidence in their stride are my son and my granddaughter who just celebrate their birthday without any fuss. 

 I suppose that by now it is something of a family tradition and taken as normal.