In which I lament never having met my prince

I’M WRITING THIS on the day Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement. I was glued to their interview on TV. She has such shiny hair. And great teeth. And she is just so darned confident and self-assured; there was none of the peering out from under dark lashes in the manner of her late future mother-in-law. She said words like ‘organic’ with a straight face. She was totally, utterly certain of Harry’s love for her; you can tell who wears the chinos. She was the adored, he the adoree – no matter the palaces and the thousands of acres of moorland, the two tours of duty, the ‘cottage’ off Kensington High Street. She is utterly perfect, even down to the fact she has two much-loved dogs, one of whom has been flown to be with her.

I read about his wooing of her. The bombarding of her with texts. The invitation to sleep under canvas in Botswana. The weekends at Soho Farmhouse. The ring, oh my God, the ring. We can overlook the fact it is yellow gold: he dug up the diamond with his own bare hands down a mine in Africa. He framed that stone with fragments from his mother’s jewellery: a bit creepy, but, boy, is it expensive.

And I started to wonder why for some women romance is like this. They are pursued. She never once said, ‘Well, I almost didn’t turn up at Invictus, as I was midway between waxes.’ It is all excitement and helicopters and Wimbledon and Scotland. Holding hands. Smiling. Gazing into each other’s eyes. Someone else organising and paying for the wedding. They talked about children, even though they are not married yet, not until next spring. It was all an adventure, a journey they would embark upon together. They were a ‘team’.

Hmm. Well. My life hasn’t been quite like that. No one has ever pursued me. No one has whisked me off to Soho Farmhouse: they would moan about the price, pretend it’s ‘booked up’ until 2020, that it is full of annoying media types like… me. No one has dug up a diamond for me with his bare hands; it was as much as I could do to get my husband to mow the lawn. We all know what my latest engagement ‘ring’ cost.

It’s an extreme example, but how lovely, and useful, to find a man who has houses and cars and connections and interesting friends. How amazing, and a bit retro, would it feel to marry someone who would look after you, provide for you, cherish you and open doors and windows on whole new worlds. This is how romance is supposed to be. This is why we devote our lives to pilates, shopping, sit-ups, face packs, pore strips, Bliss Softening Mitts, strip wax, hot wax, pedicures and endless bloody bottles of water. This is why we don’t eat chocolate, and instead buy Touche Eclat and corner lashes and fake tans and pedicures and stupid outfits we neither need nor really love. We are lamps, wanting to attract that perfect moth in a sea of darkness.

All I’ve ever attracted to my bare bulb is men who are babies: useless, selfish, whiny, unimaginative, unreliable; who can’t even use a dipstick or operate a strimmer. You can’t blame me, because I am (or used to be, more like) dynamic, high flying and rich; Meghan is that, too. I cannot imagine Meghan putting up with a man who says of his broken boiler, which looks about 400 years old, ‘It was, to my mind, working when I left.’ She would wither him with just one look.

I suppose I’m in a dark mood, not just from the jealousy, the prospect of spending the next six months writing articles about her outfits, but be-cause David Cassidy has just died. Everyone I’ve ever loved seems to be dead. David (Cassidy; not the other, more recent one; though I do wonder, sometimes). Michael Jackson. Prince. George Michael. Squeaky. Snoopy. Sam. Hilda. And Dreamy. It feels like the end, whereas for Meghan it’s the beginning. I’m just jealous. I want to be wooed. I want to be treated to Soho Farmhouse, though I’m sure it would annoy the hell out of me: it lists on its website a chance to visit the ‘horse stables’; what other type is there? I want to be whisked to The Pig at Combe for Christmas Day. Fat chance. I want someone to dig up diamonds for me with their bare hands, not buy me a £21.99 piece of tin as a ‘token’ that was never exchanged for an actual expression of love. In the words of dear, departed David Cassidy: I want to be cherished.

“HOW AMAZING – AND RETRO – TO MARRY SOMEONE WHO WOULD LOOK AFTER YOU, CHERISH YOU”