Setting The World on Fire

 Hello & welcome to My Own V. Special Royal Wedding.
It's now a full twenty-four hours after William & Catherine exchanged vows, but I'm still inside Westminster Abbey with the other 1900 guests, a thousand of whom are wearing giant Philip Treacy hats that look like 3D diagrams of  the human intestinal system. 
As I type,  I'm  watching the  'E!' News coverage of the wedding which I taped last nite but didn't see at the time because I was far too busy watching the entire BBC live coverage. I'm nothing if not a Traditionalist.
Of course, all of  this is just a warm up for Fashion Police's Royal Wedding Special which goes to air in about two hours Sydney time. I wonder if Joan is going to Crown any of the guests, or perhaps even a member of the Wedding Party, the 'Fashhole of the Royal Wedding' ? Would she dare be soo blasphemous, I wonder?

I hope she is. I've had an absolute gutload of all the fawning commentary that I've been hearing, not just over the past day, but from all the dreary documentaries about the Wedding that I've been forcing myself to watch over the past couple of weeks. I had to watch them all because  I wasn't sufficiently revved up for The Big Day. I absolutely needed to know more about the Happy Couple & The Middleton Family.
During the course of about ten documentaries, I learned that:
  1.Carol, the bride's mum, ostentatiously chewed gum at William's graduation parade & that Everyone was Appalled.
2. Kate was going to do her own make up on the big day because she wanted her husband-to-be to recognise her at the altar.
3. They broke up for a few short months in 2007 & Kate spent the whole time ostentatiously whooping it up at nightclubs wearing slightly raunchier- than- normal outfits that revealed a new dedication to Spray Tanning.
Perhaps I should start Spray Tanning. I know they do them at 'The Waxing Diva's', where I go to have my eyebrows done. But it sounds a little bit grubby because whilst in the salon, I've overheard the spray tanners tell their subjects that they can't take a shower or even get a drop of water on their tanned bodies for absolutely ages after the tanning or it will wash off.

The Bridal Gown

 Sadly, I'm not modelling Kate's bridal gown which I was v. relieved to know was by Sarah Burton from Alexander McQueen.
No, I'm modelling my own from 1978. I dragged it out of My Archival Camphor Chest just to model it for you. I was v. irritated to discover that, try as I might, I was totally unable to do up the zip. Actually, the zip was already broken, which was obviously caused by my trying to squeeze myself into it on previous occasions. In fact, the last time I wore it was at a dinner I hosted for the wedding of Charles & Diana.
That was a raucous nite. So raucous, that I spilled some red wine down the front of the gown. It's almost, but not quite, worth it, to double click on the photo to see the stain.
One good thing, though, about me now not fitting into my Wedding Dress, is that it proves that back then I must have been almost as thin as Kate is now. How wonderful.
But Not So Wonderful was  that at the time I thought I was Slightly Porky. What a waste of Slimness.

Because I couldn't do up the zip, you can't really see the Intended Effect of the Dress. FYI, it was called a 'Scarlett O'Hara' dress (but perhaps it was just me that called it that) because it was off the shoulder & looked a bit like Scarlett before the rot set in. I remember some months after the wedding My Mother telling some Bored Shopkeeper how perfectly wonderful I looked in the dress from behind standing at the altar. And how my Blonde Pageboy Hair  was like a Halo. I'm sure Carol felt as proud of Kate as My Mum did.

It's nearly time for The Fashion Police Wedding Special. But before I go I must share a little vignette from this morning:
As I do every saturday morning, I visited 'BednobsEtc', my favourite conveniently located charity shop. As usual, the place was bursting at the seams with avid shoppers. But no one was looking at the racks of clothes today. Everyone was talking to each other about the wedding. The only person who hadn't seen it was the volunteer sales assistant who felt so out of the loop that she had her iPhone out  googling all the wedding pictures so she could follow the conversation.
Predictably, everyone loved Kate's dress, although one elderly fashion commentator said that she thought it was a shame that Kate's hair was a Bit Flat. She thought it should have risen like a modest souffle above the tiara. I agreed with her. Some deliciously   nasty comments were made about two young members of the Royal Family who looked like they'd just come from playing The Ugly Sisters in a 'Cinderella on Ice' Pantomime.  And then of course, there were the usual questions asked about Prince Harry's Paternity. And about how come Julia Gillard, our Prime Minister bought her hat at the last minute at a department store & didn't bother showcasing an Australian designer? Someone said she just doesn't care about how she looks.

But my almost, but not quite, favourite part of the Whole Show came when the Archbishop of Canterbury, or whoever he was, began his sermon with with words of St. Catherine of Siena, who said in the fourteenth century, 'Be who God intended you to be & you will set the World on Fire'.
How gutsy & vibrant & fabulous I thought, particularly after I googled St. Cath. of S & checked that she wasn't in fact,  the St. Catherine who was burned at the stake & who the popular firecracker, 'Catherine Wheel' is named after.

Oh, one more thing, I cried:  1. Every time I saw the Household Cavalry. I don't know what it is about Me & Horses that makes me cry.
 2. When I saw people wearing Union Jacks in the street heartily singing 'Jerusalem'.
3. When they showed the Queen during 'God Save the Queen'.

In the Blogosphere No One Can Actually Hear You Scream

 OMG.
How, Dear Reader (assuming there is a Dear Reader out there), could I leave it that long?
I just did. But you'll be relieved to know that I've got Good excuses handy:

Excuse #1. One evening, my Home Computer made an innocuous little click & then stopped. I sat in front of the screen desperately clinging on to the keypad pleading with it to 'Stay Alive.' Like it was the most heart rending (is that really how you spell it? Perhaps it should be 'Heart Rendering'?) scene between  A Woman & Her Computer of all time.
I gave it all my energy & still it came up blank. A Metaphor for my life, really.
Of course I took it Personally. I take everything personally. How could My Computer abandon me like this, I wailed to the Universe.
Three weeks passed. Immobilized by grief, I did nothing.
Today, the Fifth day of my Easter Two-Week Holiday, the Veil Lifted. I made an appointment at The Apple Store for tomorrow. Perhaps it can be resusitated. Perhaps not.
In the meantime, I'm using my School Lap Top. It feels like it belongs in a Museum. And it also knows that I Don't Like It. I know that sounds silly, but I have a belief that if a computer feels even the slightest aggression from its user, it picks it up & Behaves Badly. But that's a whole other story.

Excuse #2: Death.
Yes, that's right. Death. But don't  think that it was Me that Died & that's the reason why I haven't been posting, & that this post is kind of like 'A Lovely Bones' type entry, Absolutely Not.
No, it was Aileen, the almost 98 year old who I'm photographed with above. The photo was taken   a couple of years ago, when we were off to see the musical, 'Chicago' which I loathed & Aileen couldn't hear properly. Note she is wearing a smart little crepe jacket & an angora beret with a Ferragamo bag slung around her shoulder.
I now own the jacket & the bag, along with a whole swag of other choice items of Aileen's, all bought by her over the years at her local St. Vincent de Paul Charity Shop.

Here's Aileen when she was a  Mere Slip O'er A Girl.

 
 And here I am at the Cemetery with MBFF Marge, Aileen's daughter, who now lives in Thousand Oaks, California & my beautiful daughter, Maeflower. FYI, I'm wearing another of Aileen's jackets which is v. On-Trend at the moment.  Lace. 
I know that we, well, I, Lack Gravitas in the photo, which is perhaps the preferred look one should adopt Graveside. But it had been a Stressful Morning partly because the Priest, who Marge had originally thought was Fabulously Spiritual & seemed to have an Inner Knowing about The Afterlife, turned out to be in the  Early to Mid Stages of Alzheimer's Disease. Throughout the Requieum Mass, Father Pothole kept on calling Aileen, 'Our Sister, Eileen' & then he stuck to his old version of the mass, ignoring all the Special Prayers thanking Hospital Staff & Carers  that had been carefully printed in the Mass Booklet.
But the worst part was his Sermon. His topic was the life of Edith Stein, a Jewish Girl who converted to Catholicism &  became a Carmelite Nun & then died in Auschwitz. Apart from the fact that both Aileen & Edith were Now Dead, there was absolutely nothing to link them. Aileen had never been Jewish, showed no interest in entering the Convent & even though she was alive during The Holocaust, she thankfully lived in another part of the world & so missed out on it.   But Father Pothole did his best.
 And then he got stuck in a kind of Time Loop & took ages to get out of it. He would say in a lilting tone, 'Today we feel the loss....' with a downward inflection on the word, 'loss' & then he'd finish the sentence with .....'but we feel the Hope', with an Upward Inflection on the word, 'Hope'. He must have said it at least eight times. In fact I know he did because I counted.
He did it again Graveside. He got stuck on the words, 'And May Perpetual Light shine upon her' & just couldn't stop saying it.
By this stage, I was ready to shove him down the big hole that the gravediggers had  freshly dug & into the coffin. But I resisted the urge.



 Here's Maeflower before the Mass. I thought she looked spectacular, wearing a gorgeous little beaded tunic from 'Urban Outfitters' Online Store which she paired with a pashmina from her recent trip to Nepal with 'Habitat'. Black tights & black suede wedge heels injected a Touch of Mourning.

 Here's Some Holiday Outfits. I seem to have Slightly Changed My Look. I wonder if you can notice?
I'm wearing a shirt from 'The Aileen Collection', a thrifted skirt I've had for years but I seem to be inextricably attracted to, DKNY slingbacks, also thrifted & a big Fake Piece of Twisted Bling.

 Part of the Changed Look is 1. Jackets, 2. Heels. 3. Big oversized rings. 4. Animal Prints. 5. Navy.
I totally love Navy now, even though my Poor Dead Mother always thought that Navy made me look, 'refined & nice'. Who wants to look like that when you're  sixteen? 
Come to think of it, who wants to look like that at 58? Not me.
But I am trying to come up with ways to make Navy look Slightly Slutty.

 This shirt has Ruffles on the neck & on the sleeves. A slight Elizabethan Note. I can't really do up the buttons properly so I'm not doing them up at all.

I do like my new 'Benetton' pure light wool jacket I bought from 'BednobsEtc' for five bucks. In fact, I've got a whole swag of jackets from them which is soooo timely because this week George Kotsiopolous from 'Fashion Police' drooled over Eva Longoria wearing a pair of shorts & a jacket & said that she was 'sooo On Trend' because Menswear is really really big right now. What a shame I can't wear shorts.