Around London, the finish line’s in sight but still so far away. The Wall of Steel security fence that surrounds everything important is expanding; last Tuesday it was just at Westminster Abbey, by the weekend it had reached Trafalgar Square, crawling along, creeping in the night. The weather is hot. Heat advisory-worthy, unseasonably hot. The weathermen are relentlessly positive, but sometimes it looks like they are about to crack. (It should get back to normal by the wedding. Shouldn’t it? Heheheheheh.)
Lethargy. Exhaustion. Manifested not only by the rapidly shrinking body of Kate Middleton, but by everyone, almost, as if wedding anticipation peaked too soon but people have to keep up appearances because that is what they do in Britain.
“YOU MUST BE SO EXCITED,” cabdrivers say to foreigners.
Over in the States, one assumes that over in London, elation must have reached epic proportions. That the whole city would be good and jazzed. Some of the city is. But some of the city — and this is what you cannot say on television because it will ruin thebiggestweddingofthecentury — feels like . . .
“I just don’t care about the wedding,” says Buddy Webb, who works as an orderly in a hospital. “I just really could not care less.”
“Wedding Countdown Starts Here!!” Hello magazine advertises.
Wrong. The wedding countdown started 70 million years ago. There has never been a time when we were not talking about the wedding: Who is coming (Madonna’s ex). Who is not coming (Madonna). Which car will carry Kate to the Abbey and when.
“Apparently, at 10:51, she’ll be leaving for the church,” Samantha Sylvester, a medical student, tells her friends while picnicking in Green Park. She pauses and looks horrified. “God, why do I know this?”
Osmosis. Absorption. Subliminal messaging. Somehow, despite the fact that Sylvester does not buy tabloids or watch television, details about the wedding have hunted her down, as they have hunted everyone else in this country. Inceptioned her like nobody’s business. Leonardo DiCaprio revealed Kate Middleton’s travel route to Sylvester in a dreamscape three levels down.
She is not even planning to watch the wedding.
“But you can’t avoid it,” says Jerzy Weirzbowski, an event planner. “That’s the thing. You go down for breakfast, and you just know it’s going to be there in the paper. William’s face. My [Polish] aunt keeps asking me to send her a plate. She already has a royal plate. How many does she need?”
He did not mind it at first. The general consensus is that, except for the ardent anti-royalists, nobody really minds Prince William or the concept of his nuptials. At first, wedding news was even a nice break from Libya or Egypt.
Then the wedding ate the world. Now Weirzbowski wants a break from the break. He is just so tired.
The onslaught continues. The pundits are only just arriving. All the morning shows, and evening shows, and in-between shows who will make sure that no detail is overlooked, even the ones you really wish they wouldn’t tell you. Feel free to overlook this detail! you want to say, but no. They have already readied their Team of People With British Accents to comment, and comment they shall. Every famous person who has ever clipped an “r” is booked for the wedding. This includes Sharon Osbourne, Hugh Jackman (Australian, close enough), Cat Deeley and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.
God! Save this couple from the Royal Divorce after few years...
