Wills And Kate – The Freakiest Show On Earth

Oh what dark times we, the humble inhabitants of the once great and sprawling British Empire, find ourselves living in. Unemployment is at record levels, gang culture and knife crimes are rising faster than the sea levels and ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ (England’s vile and vacuous answer to America’s vapid scripted reality show ‘The Hills’) has been commissioned for yet another season. On top of all that, our economy flounders as the national debt has reached an estimated 1.1 trillion pounds and counting, not including the amount of money the government doesn’t actually own has spent bailing out other countries. Dark times indeed my friends; but wait, what light so sweet and promising shineth over yonder, could it be we are finally creeping towards the end of this collapsed tunnel under which our society has been trapped for over a decade now? Let us edge forwards and find out, for we have nothing else left to lose, save perhaps our dignity.

Surely it must be the light of millions of this nation’s inhabitants preparing to celebrate the upcoming union of one of our Country’s most treasured couples, HRH Prince William and his blushing bride to be, Kate Middleton. Unless you’ve been on a mission to gather space debris left floating in our orbit from hundreds of pointless rocket launches as part of your community service for that misdemeanor with the shopping trolley and the World’s largest sea urchin, or you simply don’t care enough about anyone else but yourself to pay attention to the news or gossip pundits, you will of course be aware of the impending royal nuptials. According to all of the most credible sources, and by those I mean the Windsor family’s very own twitter feed and the recent headlines from the Daily Mail, it will be a chance for not only the citizens of Great Britain, but for the entire population of planet Earth to come together and celebrate in the joyous matrimony of our second in line to the throne and some posh bird he met while at university. As a mere observer and commentator of the preparations leading up to the big day this article will do it’s best to abstain from the nation dividing debate of whether or not the idea of sustaining an outdated and antiquated monarchy in a country which has been governed under a democratic parliament for several centuries now is a worthy use of our taxes. That’s called a loaded sentence kids, look it up.

Now, it must be said that no one else in the world knows how to throw a party like us Brits. That is, however, no one in their right mind would want to be able to throw the kind of parties we are famous for. Compared to the Mardi Gras’ of New Orleans, the ‘Dia de los Muertos’ of Mexican fame or even the bi-annual carpet toss and millipede race held on the winter and summer solstices in St Lucia, British street parties appear about as fun as listening to your forgetful great aunt try and tell you a story about a meal she once had in Denmark while a scratched CD of Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will go on’ gets caught in an endless loop in the background. For all our supposed eccentricities we as a nation really suck at kicking back and having a proper shindig.

For those of you unfamiliar with what a British street party entails; imagine a family picnic on one of those benches you find in woods and lakes, except you’re having this picnic in the middle of your own road, and every other family in your street has pulled up a bench and joined it onto yours. Nearly everyone is dressed in the colors of the Union Jack, some proudly donning the flag on plastic hats, others going to the extreme length of wearing suits printed in the garish red white and blue. The table is full of cucumbers; cucumber sandwiches, cucumbers in the ‘Pimms’ and lemonade, cucumber pies, cucumber souffle and ‘cucumber surprise’, which is a cucumber cut into the shape of a smaller cucumber. Gaze upwards and you will see strung between the houses miles and miles of…shudder…bunting, those pointless triangles on string which have become iconic as a symbol of British people being forced to have a good time. The conversation is torturous and sedentary at best; when not explaining to an unidentified screaming child that it is covering your leg in mashed up cake and sick you are forced into discussing trivial matters with neighbors whose existence you’ve spent the past ten years ignoring. In short, slightly worse than Dante’s description of the third circle of hell minus the three headed dog.

The thing is, the knowledge of how horrific these street parties will be isn’t going to stop the majority of Middle England trying to rouse people’s spirits in a contrived effort to pretend to the World that we are having fun and enjoying ourselves. This is partly due to our cultural addiction to failure and disappointment, but more than that it is a ploy to get as many foreigners here as possible in order to sell them as much cheap tat disguised as valuable souvenirs as possible. The dark truth is that we use the Royal family as a means to an end and nothing more, they are to us what sideshow freaks were to traveling circuses at the turn of the last century. They are an invaluable source of income to us, so no matter how ashamed and disgusted we are by their appearances and actions we hang on to them, pretending to the World that we love them, while secretly berating and abusing them, locking them up in their own castles and chasing them down with our paparazzi minions whenever they stray too far or abdicate.

Continuing the 19th century circus analogy we have unfortunately come to rely on our freak show a little too much, especially since the rest of our troupe are either critically injured or off sick with the flu. The tightrope walker that was our coal and tin mining industry fell and broke its legs decades ago. The acrobats of our fishing industry have been floundering for a while now, and their future is uncertain. Even Piers Morgan, the squishy faced clown, has defected and no longer makes a complete tit out of himself for our enjoyment and derision. We are left clinging desperately onto our precious freaks, and if one of them decides he’s going to get married, well then we are surely going to milk it for all its worth, which is probably not very much considering the combined personality of the happy couple is barely enough to halfway fill an ant’s skull.

So was that light really as full of hope and promise as it first appeared. Not quite I’m afraid, it was probably a mere trick of the light caused by HRH Prince William being papped while poncing around with his wife to be and the flash reflecting off his massively over-sized forehead. As for your dignity, you left that behind as soon as you started reading. Sorry to have disappointed you, but it’s not my fault, it’s in my heritage.