I’m as much a Middleton gawper as the next girl, and as a nearly ex-school mate (I got expelled from Marlborough College before I started after swearing at a groundsman on summer school aged 15) I feel a sense of kinship with this woman who has risen to such establishment heights, in that, despite it all, I still think, it coulda been me.
Hell, we even look alike, with our wonky cheek boned faces, funny chins and appealing baby blues, and though I lack the horsey tresses, I have the requisite ankles. I could rock LK Bennett nude courtshoes, although my tragus piercing would, with all likelihood, have needed to come out.
So she’s done what moreorless every fertile woman will or has done, and I doubt, when it came to it, she was any more dignified than any of them. But she’s done it and with the eyes of the world on her, she will bring up her child with every possible help and hindrance. Good luck to her.
But I don’t want to talk about Kate, because let’s face it everything that could be said will already be pressed and printed in souvenir editions. It’s a big day for other people too and she has more attention that she can probably handle.
This week has represented the first week since the birth of my own ‘King’s choice’ that I have had a sustained period of time to myself, by which I mean the hours between 9.00 and 3.30 when I drop and pick my two from school have been my own. I could wax lyrical about schlepping down to the local lido to read and swim or lying in till 7.30 on a school day, but I won’t because for many of you, this type of ‘time to yourself’ is completely taken for granted, and it’s only after waking up with an agenda every single day for 8 and a half years that you can truly appreciate solitude.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t like too much of it. Too much of my own company has always made me wonder to much about the point of it all, so it’s best my days are poised and angled by the school day on which to hook the absence of others. It crossed my mind whether I should bake some bread to while away the hours, but the flour’s all packed in readiness for Friday’s Big Move. So instead, I will attack the big pile of irony that accumulates each week, and is normally, begrudgingly, done by Tom, for most of it is made up of his work shirts and I’m less of a perfectionist than him, when it comes to creases.
When that is done, and after half hour of yoga in the park, I expect it will be kids’ pick up, and today I have been persuaded to take home an extra child, for Jonah rarely has after school playmates, to avoid harassing Hellorgy, the sexy baby sitters, who probably wouldn’t mind that much – but then, it’s rare that Jonah gets asked anywhere after school either and I’m happy he has a friend, and a girl to boot.
When all is said and done, at least after eight years, I get some time to myself. I doubt poor Kate will be accorded the same respect.
I liked this piece by Not Another Mummy Blogger about whether the Duchess of Cambridge should have had her labour live tweeted by Clarence House. Have a butchers:
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