Important news! Really?

It’s coming on Christmas; they’re putting up trees in the village, to misquote Joni Mitchell. Everyone is shopping excitedly, even me, rushing off to the supermarket to buy wine at bargain prices, following the advice we found in a weekend magazine.

I ran into a friend in the supermarket today who told me, in response to an ironic comment of mine about excitement, that all she has heard in the news all day has been about the engagement of Prince Harry and Megan Markle. Everyone has apparently been waiting with bated breath for an announcement about the engagement. Here’s an excerpt from the Guardian, prior to the announcement, when they were still going on about the nation being at fever pitch:

“Was it supposed to have happened last Thursday? Maybe it will be this Tuesday? Speculation and rumour about a possible engagement announcement from the US actor Meghan Markle and Prince Harry reached fever pitch at the weekend, although Kensington Palace aides are keeping tight-lipped. For months it has been clear the fifth in line to the throne has found a serious partner in the star of the TV legal drama Suits, whom he met in summer 2016. But the sense that an engagement announcement is imminent has been stoked by reports that Markle has already packed up her rented Toronto house and is moving into Nottingham Cottage, the prince’s home in the grounds of Kensington Palace. The 36-year-old American divorcee was photographed shopping on Kings Road, Chelsea, last week.
The bookmaker Ladbrokes stopped taking bets on the engagement last week and Sunday saw press reports that Theresa May had “cleared her diary” on Thursday in expectation of an announcement. This was emphatically denied by Downing Street, which pointed out that less than 24 hours after the budget, the prime minister had other priorities, such as spending half a day in Leeds with the chancellor, Philip Hammond, to promote the government’s house-building policies.”

What I want to know is why the Prime Minister, who surely has more important stuff to do, would need to clear her diary for this. What does it have to do with her? Does she expect to be invited to the celebration party? I expect she is rather relieved that it has finally happened though. This will presumably take some attention away from the Brexit negotiations fiasco. Nothing like a bit of bread and circuses to keep the people happy!

On the radio news I have just heard that the wedding is planned for the spring. Will this be before or after the next royal baby is born? Will Kate have time to get her figure back for the great event? Will little Charlotte be a confident bridesmaid? These are all important questions!

I saw somewhere a statement thatvthis is the first time a royal family has been linked to showbusiness. Does being a newsreader count as showbusiness. If so, I should like tompoint out thatvthe Spanish royal family has already done it. King Felipe is married to Letizia, a divorcee who used to work on television news!

Here are some other important things:

Liverpool has apparently contributed two new words to the British Library’s Evolving English Word Bank. They are “webs” and “trabs” and both mean “trainers”, the footwear, not personal trainers. My source talked about dialect words such as “mardy” meaning “sulky” and “nesh”, which it defines as “susceptible to the cold”. Now, I would have defined “mardy” as meaning a whole attitude of sulkiness, complaining about things and being generally a moaner but I’ll accept just “sulky”. “Nesh”, however, is not just “susceptible to the cold” but implies that the person so described is a complete softie who complains about the cold even when the weather is quite mild. “Spelk”, a dialect word for a splinter, the kind you get when a bit of wood or similar under the skin. This is a good word and we should try to bring it back into general usage!

Tim Peake, the astronaut featured in the regular “This much I know” item in the Sunday Observer. Here is something he said:- “Sandhurst is not posh at all. It’s a completely level playing field, everybody is treated the same ... and that’s abysmally! The first few weeks is all about breaking you and then they rebuild you into the mould they want you to be. It was an incredibly positive experience for me.”

His final sentence there suggests that the brainwashing worked totally on him. Or am I becoming a little cynical.