Maybe, it’s the gloriously hot weather, or an antidote to the doom and gloom of austerity cuts and military campaigns, or just glee at having a day off work, but there is definitely a celebratory ‘bring on the bunting’ feel in our small Sussex town.
They’re closing the road next Friday, trestle tables to be laden with shared food, buckets filled with beer, a big screen erected to watch the events from Westminster and already the little girls at No. 8 are parading in their princess costumes.
We’re back to the innocent nostalgia of village fetes and coconut shies, cupcakes and Enid Blyton. Fourteen years after the tragedy and sadness surrounding Diana’s death is finally being laid to rest.
It’s a major coup for ‘the firm’, as the Royal family are known, and much is because Will Wales, as his name appears on his Search and Rescue helicopter jacket, comes across as a regular guy: able to take responsibility and yet still poke fun at himself.
It helps that he has inherited his mother’s good looks and easy manners, and it helps that he is patently marrying for love. Not a foreign princess or a member of the aristocracy but a girl he met at uni from a family that has made its millions through a party-planning business.
In one day, the monarchy, despite its pomp and privilege, will be celebrated for appearing normal. With us, not apart from us. It is how William wants it, he has done much to try and reach out beyond the aloofness and snobbery that has gone before.
It’s been a good year for monarchists. The King’s Speech did much to humanise the pressures and the loneliness that comes with the duty of wearing the crown.
Meanwhile, the Queen has deliberately been changing the style of how she delivers her Christmas message, giving the press and the public more access to her family life.
But in William we see the chance for a modern monarchy which might help reform antiquated constitutional rules, allowing women equality with men and religious independence.
It won’t be easy. There are already those voices suggesting the crown could skip a generation from grandmother to grandson; there are those who believe in a meritocracy, that it’s an anomaly to have anyone with inherited titles and status and there are many, especially in other parts of the Commonwealth who think it is time to cut the umbilical cords entirely and become Republics.
But for this coming week, with an estimated two billion people due to watch the wedding on April 29th, 200 million pounds being spent on souvenirs, red, white and blue flowers planted in pub window boxes the length and breadth of Britain and ‘Kiss me Kate’ caps a best seller, we’re simply going to have a jolly holiday.
So blow up the balloons, shed a few soppy tears and listen to the ice cream van play, ‘Here comes the bride’. We’re all invited to Wills’ wedding.
