I don't hate the royals, I just don't care

The BBC posted a strange story on their site last week, where it equated not being excited about the royal wedding to being a staunch republican. I’d never heard the word being used outside the States until then, and the whole thing kind of weirds me out. News stations seem to have a real problem with handling the kind of person who just doesn’t give a flying jet-propelled fuck about something. A lot of people seem to cynically believe that this is put on by them to get juicier stories, but I think it’s more of a self-delusion they’ve managed to get into. Theirs is a world seen through Marmite-coated spectacles, where everything is either hated or loved, and as a result everything is tinged with a slight hue of brown, sticky shit.

The article goes on to suggest how ‘refuseniks’ might spend the day, as if my usual schedule of waking up, swearing at the world, consuming some coffee and working will be otherwise impossible due to the sheer number of people in the streets chanting royalist slogans and holding up comedy-sized foam crowns. Amusingly, one of their suggestions is to “leave the country”, which I couldn’t help but interpret as a friendly invitation to go fuck myself and go marry France if I love republics so much.

Amusingly, one of their suggestions is to “leave the country”, which I couldn’t help but interpret as a friendly invitation to go fuck myself and go marry France if I love republics so much

Much as it puzzles me to see the local Thomas Cook offering commemorative traveller’s cards and people convinced they’re seeing Kate Middleton’s face in small confectionery items as if she’s the Second Coming of Diana or something, I can’t say I feel that much animosity towards two people who are apparently in love and would like to marry. William might be as ugly as sin, but then there’s a guy sitting on the adjacent table to me right now who looks like someone hit the randomise button in a videogame character generator too many times, and he seems to be doing fine for himself.

I think, like most of the ‘refuseniks’, rather than caring about the wedding so much I have a problem with people who seem to actively be looking for a fight. The comments on the BBC article include one fine lady who proposes that I should “go to work and give the overtime to charity”. Which is a bit like proposing we send all the Muslims out to man the supermarkets on Christmas Day, or that Wales should just forward all work-related emails to England on St. David’s Day.

What riles people up like this? Why do we feel the need to get defensive just because one person is being made a bit more royal than they were previously? One of the reasons I can just about bear living in this country, besides the fact that nowhere else sells boiled sweets that are actually edible, is that we don’t have this instinctive, unreasonable protectiveness about Our Country. Our Country is just a place that we live in, and as long as no-one’s trying to crap explosives all over it from a great height we’re happy to let most things slide. That’s why being English doesn’t feel like an automatic negative Intellect modifier in a bad RPG.

In case you are interested - and why wouldn’t you be, according to the BBC - I won’t be in the country for the wedding. Not through any concerted effort to avoid the proceedings, but just because I have to be somewhere else. Unless they start handing out free commemorative money while I’m gone, I won’t feel I’ve missed a hugely important historical event, but I think it’s great that some people are keeping the quaint old England stereotype alive by using the word ‘bunting’ unironically in conversation.

If you’re hosting a street party for the wedding, good luck and feel free to post photos galore on Facebook. If you’re doing anything else - anything at all, related or unrelated to the royal family or the political affiliations thereof - please don’t let me know. It’s not because I don’t like you, and it’s definitely not because I’m not English enough. Remember, the true meaning of being English is bottling up those feelings like a fine wine and letting them mature and sour you inside until you become a bitter shell of the person you used to be. Like the ugly guy on the next table. Who I am increasingly aware is in fact Christopher Hitchens.

Here’s to being English this Easter, and keeping those opinions politely smothered. God bless this land and all those who passive-aggressively dwell within her.