Royal Wedding: Part 4.

A brief thing. I wrote a second article for The Northwest Indiana times covering the excitement for the wedding right up to the procession. It's not available online, so I'm putting up what I wrote here.

Kass Stone
Times Correspondent
London – The celebration of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding has been building for weeks.
On Wednesday afternoon, the children of Plumstead Manor Nursery (located on London’s South East side) celebrated the royal nuptials with a wedding party in William and Kate’s honor. The little girls came dressed in their best princess dresses and the boys came bedecked in their finest suits. They made royalty themed arts and crafts, ate wedding cake, danced and waved their Union Jacks proudly in honor of the prince and new princess.
Plumstead Manor Nursery treasurer Jean Reader is a lifelong fan of the monarchy. In her late 70s, Reader was one of the hundreds of thousands of people that cheered Queen Elizabeth’s coronation procession in 1953. For her, the wedding and community events like the nursery party are important for British society.
“If you look around, there are a lot of different nationalities living here and this helps make it all gel,” said Reader. “After all, we do have a monarchy and we should celebrate it. We are here to wave the flag.”
Crown Point natives Chris and Lisa Westworth had planned to be amongst the throng of people cheering on the royal wedding procession. Their plans had to change when Lisa gave birth to their son, Cayden, several weeks early. They are now content to watch the ceremony from the comfort of their home in the West London neighborhood of Chiswick.
“I just like the fact that we live in London while everyone is so obsessed about this wedding and that one day we can tell our son that we lived here when King William and Queen Kate were married. It is kind of exciting,” said Lisa Westworth.
Amongst the carnival atmosphere of vendors and celebrants in Trafalgar Square early Friday morning, just outside the route the wedding procession will take from Buckingham Palace along The Mall to Westminster Abbey, were Canadians Amy Beckham and Brenda Hooton. The two traveled from their home in Niagra Falls, Ontario to celebrate the wedding in London.
“We’re here because I think there is so much bad news in the world and this is an opportunity to be happy and just have a good time,” said Beckham. “Besides, we share the royal family. She’s our queen too. She’s on our money too.”
On The Mall, seeking a place to witness the procession, were Mark Abella and Mandy Yoxall of Sydney, Australia.
“It’s our heritage. They’re our royal family too. It’s a once in a life time opportunity for us. We’re not going to get to experience this again, seeing a king married,” said Yoxall. “I mean, Prince Harry will probably get married, but he’s not going to be king.”

Royal Wedding Part 2: Journo-ism.

Here is the my story previewing the royal wedding. The point of the story was that most people here in London are rather indifferent, at best, about the royals. Unfortunately, the teeth were totally removed and the story feels a bit pointless. I like the folks at The Northwest Indiana Times. They're lovely, hard working people who have to make decisions I hate. I get it. Every writer hates seeing their stuff get cut up. Luckily we live in an age of technological wonders. I now present for your edification the unedited version of my story.

Kass Stone
Times Correspondent
London – Not everyone in Britain is going gaga over the royal wedding. While international media coverage of the upcoming nuptials of “Wills and Kate” may make it seem like all of the UK is about to explode into a patriotic fervor over the ceremony, the truth for the majority of people is quite the opposite.
In the small working class neighborhood of Plumstead, located on London’s Southeast side, far from the pomp and circumstance of Westminster Abbey, most people show very little interest in the wedding.
“I couldn’t really care less,” said Plumstead’s Kirsty Bennett, when asked what she thought of the wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton.
The actress and mother of three does not find the fact that day of the wedding is a national holiday pleasing. The wedding is taking place less than a week after the UK’s children have returned from their four day Easter holiday, which continued directly on from a two week “half term” break. The day off for the wedding and the following Monday, along with the time already out of class, means that Britain’s children will have spent only about 9 days total in school for the month of April. This is a long time to have to find ways to entertain three young, rambunctious sons.
“Oh, I don’t care for it,” said Bennett, about the national holiday aspect of the wedding. “The boys have not been in school for ages. I can’t believe the kids are never in school. It’s absolutely mad. I love my children to death, but I need a break!”
Crown Point native’s Chris and Lisa Westworth have noticed a definite lack of royalist enthusiasm amongst their friends and neighbors in the West London neighborhood of Chiswick. The two former Crown Point High School Bulldogs are a bit surprised to find their fellow Americans more excited about William and Kate’s big day than their British cousins.
“For most of my British friends, for them it’s an excuse to have street parties and to have the day off,” said Lisa Westworth. “I think there is more excitement for the wedding in the United States than there is here.”
Lisa is following the coverage of the wedding in the buildup to Friday’s ceremony and finds Prince William and Kate Middleton quite likeable, but she has no delusions about the moral superiority of the members of the House of Windsor.
“I can kind of relate to them,” said Lisa Westworth, about the royal couple. “They are a young couple, like us, and they seem to really be in love with each other. But we all know that Prince Charles was a real scumbag and was cheating on Princess Diana the night before their wedding. But I guess William and Kate seem different. We don’t know though.”
U.S. singles are more likely than Brits to watch the royal wedding.
• 40% of U.S. singles say they plan to watch the royal wedding on TV, whereas only 31% of single Brits say they plan to tune in.
- From Zoosk Royal Wedding Survey.

The Royal Wedding: On the Scene

(A TESCO stooge [formerly the Duchess of York] handing out crappy paper flags in Trafalgar Square)

Caught the train for Charing Cross Station at about 6:30am. I was expecting a swarm of royal wedding zombies on board but was instead pleasanty surprised to find it mostly empty. I met a nice family from near Manchester who were in town for holiday and were excited to have the chance to soak up the wedding madness.

Exited Charing Cross to find a much more frantic scene. Hordes of people were flooding into Tralfagar Square and down into The Mall. They were decked out in Union Jacks, Canadian maple leaves, Australian flags, St. George crosses, Scottish flags, Welsh Dragons and, of course, images of William and Kate. Every where I looked were banners, signs and t-shirts baring smiling images of the world's most popular wealthy couple.


(Monarchist Canadians looking for some royal back bacon in Trafalgar Square)

Once down into The Mall, it quickly became apparent that I was trying to walk into a wall of red, white and blue bedecked humanity. With my arms full of free flags and other giveaways being doled out by various representatives of various companies and a notebook full of royalist friendly qoutes, I high-tailed it out of there while the getting was good. I swam up stream through people in Union Jack wigs and faces painted in St. George's cross. I scurried quickly through the horde and past the giant screens playing old news reels of the queen's coronation and back into the safety of the train station.


(A pair of Aussies in the midst of a Vegemite and Fosters induced stupor on The Mall)

I rushed on board the #3 train back home and let the silence wrap around me. Just a few hundred yards away were hundreds of thousands of Wills and Kate loving whackos whipped into a frenzy over fairy-tales and patriotism.

Back behind the safety of my keyboard in beautiful SE18, which itself is quite dead, with the wedding on the TV, I can start to relax. The high streets are empty. I can only assume that everyone is in front of the tube watching the spectacle.

The story I wrote was quite rah-rah "we love you, Wills!" type of thing. Don't feel exactly great about it, but at least I was given the chance to write up a piece that ran today (4/29/11) about how most Londoners don't seem to care one way or the other about the wedding. Though, the emptiness of our neighborhood may call that thesis in question. The average Londoner might not care about the wedding . . . all that much, but they still care. As do I. I hate the concept of the monarchy and would love to see the British Republic replace the United Kingdom, but there is something undeniably compelling about the images being broadcast around the world and being in that mad crowd of royalist sentiments was a bit electric. Just try being around that many celebrating people and not pick up a contact high.

So, in summary. Everybody pretends to not care about the royals, but the truth is everybody is fascinated by them. Love or hate them,we are paying attention and discussing them. The monarchy is disgusting but it really puts on an exciting show.


(Kate Middleton moments before the ceremony)

Royal Wedding - Yuck. Prolog

"It's like a fairy tale, isn't it?", you might hear said by some ladies chatting away in the grocery store check out line. The pair are both in their late-30s, dressed in track suits and wearing Crocks on their feet, and are looking at the cover of a celebrity gossip magazine with the shit-eating smiles of Prince William and Kate Middleton emblazoned across it. This gruesome two-some, inbetween episodes of Oprah and The View, are probably in the midst of seperate reveries in which they are being swept off their feet by "Wills" and taken off to Buckingham Palace for a good, long fuck-fest on silk sheets while rose petals fall from some heart shaped void in time and space floating over the bed. They are now a Princess and getting it from the heir-apparent is just one of the many benefits to this fairy-tale lifestyle. There are huge country estates, palaces, cars, planes, celebrity friends, jewels, designer clothes, excess and pampering!!!!! So much better than the IT stooge they married after college and feel obligated to toss a lay to once a week or so. Ugh! To think that I'm going to be adding to this fantasy makes me a bit ashamed of myself.


(Regent Street decked out for the wedding)

I have been asked to cover the Royal Wedding for The Northwest Indiana Times Newspaper. I'll be providing some exclusive color content.

(Regent St. in wedding regalia)

I'm pretty anti-monarchy so I'm hoping to create a more balanced piece about the wedding than most sources will present. The fact is I have not met anyone in London who is excited about a couple of rich super-elites getting married. They are just happy to have the day off. The fact that the wedding is a national holiday helps placate the proleteriate resentments of hereditary heirs to thrones spending millions of pounds on their "special day" while the rest of us have to deal with the massive government cuts the Tories and their Lib-Dem lapdogs have instigated.


(Here is an early picture of the happy couple)

Not being a citizen of the UK limits how far I feel I can display my disdain for the monarchy in public. It's not exactly my fight . . . yet. But I still can't help but feeling a little bit greasy in the pit of my stomach providing positive press over "Wills" and "Kate" getting hitched. Let's face it, any coverage of this wedding will be construed as ultimately promoting it. The best thing would be if nobody paid any attention to what this pack of multi-billionaire power broker welfare recipients do.

(Here is just a reminder that Prince Harry, William's little brother and currently 3rd in line to the throne, likes to get drunk and dress like a Nazi)

Well, it will be interesting to see what kind of story I come up with. I feel a little dirty about it but the truth is good intentions do not pay the kid's nursery bill.