Right royal fuss over engagement

Some proper weather in Dunedin as a thunderstorm arrives from the west in February this year. Photo: Ian Griffin
Some proper weather in Dunedin as a thunderstorm arrives from the west in February this year. Photo: Ian Griffin
How could anybody out there fail to be unmoved by the engagement of Prince Harry and Angela Merkel?

If you're like me, you will be totally seduced by all the excitement proclaimed so breathlessly by the royal-watching media about the impending nuptials.

Before you say anything, I'm just being facetious. I know Prince Harry is not going to marry the German Chancellor, because she, sadly for him, is already married to Prof Joachim Sauer, a quantum chemist no less. Instead, the prince has been forced to look elsewhere, and has opted to get engaged to United States actress Meghan Markle. But wouldn't the Merkel match-up be a better story in lots of ways?

Although I'm British, I don't consider myself a monarchist. But I'm not in the anti-camp either. I think the mainstream Royal Family do an amazing job and thoroughly deserve their pink gins before, during and after lunch. It's the hundreds of hangers-on I can't stand, such as Lord and Lady Chandelier-Pyjamas and the Earl and Countess of Pidlington, accompanied by the assorted Hooray Henrys and Henriettas.

My favourite royal wedding was in November 1973, when Princess Anne and Mark Phillips were married. We had a day off school and my best friend Dennis Pearce came over. We ate crisps (smoky bacon flavour), played Escape from Colditz, explored the woods at the bottom of the garden where we pretended a plane taking off from Heathrow had crashed, jumped in mud then ate more crisps (cheese and onion).

The big Prince Charles-Lady Diana do at the end of July 1981 wasn't so good - no day off in New Zealand and it was late evening anyway. I bought a copy of The Press the next morning for posterity, but it ended up at the bottom of a no-dig vegetable garden a few years ago.

The new royal couple certainly looked all loved-up on the television yesterday morning. But there were burning questions the interviewers didn't ask. How much loose change did Meghan have in her purse when the question was asked? What colour were Harry's socks? And what were the weather conditions when he proposed?

While we're talking weather, I'm finding it dead boring at the moment. Central Otago is clearly the place to be for some dramatic stuff. That big high pressure right across the country just does not want to move off, and my sources at the MetService tell me it could linger through into next week.

Gobbledygook time

How about these favourites of Michael Andrewes, of Dunedin, from an article about a cottage on Otago Peninsula in NZ Life and Leisure in 2012: ''Tiny Wickliffe Cottage teeters on the plump rump of the pulchritudinous peninsula like a cup-cake on a pony.'' And: ''A crib of such delicate proportions represents a shedding of corporate accoutrements.''

Tom Erikson, of Moeraki, admits he was a banker for 40 years and says the financial world is full of mumbo-jumbo jargon.

''I think the 'going forward' phrase started in the mid-'90s and was used frequently by pointy heads who resided at head office, or the Kremlin as we called it. One gentleman used this phrase so frequently we called him Going Forward.

''I had a soft toy - a monkey - with a badge attached with the words imprinted ''sounds like bulls**t to me'', on which I used to pin the most classic correspondence from the Kremlin.

''I consider people of this ilk to be sophisticated rhetoricians inebriated by the exuberance of their own verbosity''.

Quite.

Bleuch Friday

Pleased to say I'm not the only one who resented the sudden appearance of this retail interloper. Pam Constable, of Wakari, says ''rampant greedy consumerism is right''.

''I am still snorting about having shops full of Halloween junk foisted on us and along comes another retail-imposed USA excuse for overloading our shops with ever more junk and a fake excuse to buy, buy, buy. It made me sick from the moment I saw all the extra advertising on TV.''

Well said Pam. ''Stand up and be counted ... and save New Zealand from a total USA takeover of our retail sector'', she adds.

Soapbox going away now.
 

Get in touch

PAUL GORMAN
Telephone: (03) 479-3519
email: whatswiththat@odt.co.nz

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