The Wedding: The Day Before
"We are living in a time where some people want to test whether the milk is good before they buy the cow."
- Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, on Prince William and Kate Middleton's living together before marriage.
Last night, according to the red ticker crawling across the screen on the BBC, there were only two facts in the world worth knowing: Netanyahu has threatened that there will never be peace in Middle East if Palestine signs an accord with Hamas, and Kate and William attended their wedding rehearsal. That pretty much sums up how London media sees the world at the moment. When news of the rehearsal first came on, with "Breaking News" flashing across the screen and incredibly solemn faces from the presenters, I actually thought that maybe Prince William had died. (He hadn't.)
Tomorrow is a national holiday, thanks to the wedding, and all over the UK people are hosting street parties. Even David Cameron is hosting a party, though as the New Yorker pointed out his only neighbors on Downing Street are the Chief Whip and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so that party might not be so great. London is the most enthusiastic city, BBC reports, with 800 registered parties; Glasgow the least, with zero. (I went to Glasgow once and a 7-year-old gave me the finger; it did not strike me as a particularly festive place.) I would have really liked to attend one of these street parties, since it seems a great way to get to know your neighbors in a fun and relaxed setting, and also because if I met even one person there that would be a sizeable increase in the number of people I know in this country. Unfortunately, we are still living in our temporary corporate housing. While the apartment itself is pleasant enough, the neighborhood is pretty dead. It's like living in Midtown East in Manhattan, or Federal Triangle in DC, or the inside of a filing cabinet. So no street parties for us.
With 24 hours to go before the wedding, I wheeled my baby daughter down to Westminster today to take in the festivities. In terms of sheer craziness, the well-wishers along the procession route do not disappoint. People are camped all along the road from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace, wearing all manner of Union Jack clothing, sleeping in tents or on piles of the Evening Standard, relieving themselves God knows where, bathing never. It is like a squatter's camp sponsored by Hello! magazine. They are a weird, shaggy bunch, these looky-loos. If my grandmother owned as many photos of me as some of these people have of Kate and William, I would be creeped out. And they come from all over the world. "You're American!" said an older British woman who stopped to coo at my baby. "There's a lady from San Diego just over there! You should go say hello." She pointed to a woman wearing a Will-and-Kate flag as a cape standing in front of a tent plastered with photos of Princess Diana. No thanks! A blue passport is not enough to talk about.
Numbering the crazy people at a one-to-one ratio are journalists. I have never seen so many reporters in one place, even when I have attended media conferences where the point is to bring lots of reporters together in one place. There is an entire grandstand stuffed with hundreds of reporters across the street from the Abbey, and another one across the street from Buckingham Palace. They are everywhere, calling in their stories and doing stand-ups in front of the Abbey and picking gingerly through the crowd of camped-out well-wishers to get color quotes. You can pick out the journalists easily in the tent city, because they are clean.
Some of it was very sweet - "that's where the princess is getting married tomorrow!" said one mother to a tiny girl standing on her tippy-toes to peer over the fence at Westminster Abbey - and some of it was not sweet at all. One sad, shaky looking woman with a rhinestone tiara and smudgy makeup moved through the crowd repeating, "I've got prime seats . . . I've been here for three days . . . I'll pay 1000 pounds to anyone who will just sit with me. Just sit with me? Please?" She then looked into my daughter's stroller and said "Ohh, darling baby," and since 1000 pounds was the starting prince I'd pay to keep this woman away from my child, we turned around and wheeled away as fast as we could go.
