Presidential visits! Royal weddings! Referendum thoughts!

So Donald Trump has decided not to come to see us after all. Cries of “Chicken!” might be heard. Is he afraid of seeing people lined up to say they don’t like him or his policies or his ways in general? He says it’s because he doesn’t want anything to do with officially opening the new US embassy in London. He says he’s cross that Obama sold off the old one and spent a lot of money on a new one, despite the fact that apparently it was Bush who started it all off. Excuses! Excuses!

Another theory is that he is holding out for an invitation to the wedding, you know, Harry and Megan! But then he might have to socialise with the Obamas, since they are supposed to be friends of Harry’s.

How complicated it is to be a person in the public eye.

I came across an article about Princess Margaret. Not my usual sort of reading but I found myself almost feeling some sympathy for her. Like Harry, she was the “spare”, the second child in the royal family, never likely to inherit the throne but still constrained by all the royal folderol! When she wanted to marry Peter Townsend, first there was the problem of his being divorced, then she needed her big sister’s permission and even if she waited until she was 25 and deemed old enough to marry without the queen’s say-so, she would still need parliament’s agreement! Crikey! No wonder she got a bit rebellious! Of course, she could have just given up royal status and privilege and married him anyway but maybe that was a step too far towards being ordinary, just plain Mrs Townsend.

So much for Tom Petty singing “It’s good to be king and have your own way”! What did he know about it anyway?

And, after all, what are princesses for?

I still remember the fuss about Margaret’s eventual marriage to Anthony Armstrong-Jones. So she got the big princess wedding in the end. That was, I think, the first of the big televised royal weddings, certainly at a time when it was becoming more common for people to have television in the home. At the time of the coronation loads of people either didn’t see it or went to watch it at the home of a more “fortunate” friend or relation. We went to a party in a local park!

But I blame that first big televised wedding for the current mania for big expensive weddings that cost an arm and a leg. That’s where it all started and it all snowballed from there. That’s my theory anyway.

And now we have Nigel Farage suggesting we should have a second referendum about leaving the EU. That’s what he said first of all. Then there was quite a lot of reaction with remainers saying they might win. Now he says he “fears we may need a second referendum”. Both sides think they could win. Will it happen? Theresa May says not. Whatever happens, we have an expensive mess going on. 

Arguments are spinning around. One lot say that with more young people now being able to vote and some old people having popped their clogs, then remain might win. Another lot say that people who came out unusually to vote to leave in the original referendum, people who had rarely voted at all in the past, might not be bothered to turn out again and so, again, remain might win. Farage thinks that people are more convinced than ever that we should leave and a second referendum would simply silence the remoaners once and for all.

Will it happen? Who knows? I am not holding my breath!

The world is crazy!