Happiness is an ordinary life
One throws a gumboot, the other throws away title and status, and this in the same week. Out of the two aristocrats you can pick which one I think has more sense. I’m happy for the Duchess of Sussex of course, elevated from the mere tinsel world of showbiz to a life of glittering media surveillance and the constant wearing of costly frocks. I hope that joining the English royal family is all it’s cracked up to be, that its castles are warm and sanitary, and that she can have her pick of tiaras from its dusty archives to wear in the jacuzzi.
She’s a good-looking woman with a perfect frock-wearing shape, a living paper doll for the world’s juvenile media to play with, gasping over each new garment, watching each interaction with her ginga duke, and now focused on the pregnancy tummy she barely has yet.
A prisoner of the media, Meghan will find the scrutiny never ends, and inevitably turns nasty. Just now it’s all bunches of flowers, kind words, young women squealing with joy, baffled small children, as well they might be, and curious males giving her the once-over. Such squealing and idle ogling can’t last.
I didn’t go to see them. I had excitement of my own, what with checking the aphids on the roses and feeding the cats. They squeal for me. Every dinnertime I am worshipped.
While the Sussexes toured, the former Princess Ayako of Takamodo got married this week at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo where her great-greatgrandfather, the Meiji Emperor of Japan, is worshipped to this day. Even I have clapped my hands and rung his bell there as an act of homage, the least I could do as one object of worship to another.
The bride, now just Ayako Moriya, wore heirloom kimonos from the Heian era, previously worn by her ancestors, for the wedding rituals, we’re told. Her hair was dressed in aristocratic style, for the last time I guess.
I can’t quite believe the bit about Heian kimonos. They’d have to date from the 12th century, surely an impossibility, but I do believe she wore a 12-layer, 13-kilo kimono outfit. At last, like a butterfly quitting a chrysalis, she emerged in a lacy modern frock to start life as a nobody married to a shipping company employee and saying, endearingly, ‘‘I am filled with happiness.’’
Her dowry, given to her for living expenses by the state, was around NZ$1.5 million. I fear it won’t be enough.
While the new Mrs Moriya drank a celebratory glass of wine, Meghan, the new duchess, was gumboot-throwing in New Zealand.
I’ve thrown gumboots myself, in exasperation at how difficult they are to put on, or when finding a live weta inside. It’s not a pleasant thing to happen to your toes.
In the background, a prelude. The Duchess of Cambridge was attacked in England for wearing a frock that some royal watchers didn’t like. This signals the inevitable pitting of one attractive duchess and her frocks against the other that will lead to years of shrieking magazine covers of them scowling or seemingly wiping away tears. Think of royal watchers, regardless of gender, as 12-year-old mean girls making stuff up.
The dress was, of course, Alexander McQueen and elegant, though one royal watcher called it ‘‘the WORST I’ve ever seen’’. With it Kate wore the main act, a tiara valued at an estimated £5 million to £10m. Try dissing that.
Great to be ex-princess Ayako, then, free of all this nonsense, merging into the crowd. She’s said her goodbyes to the aristocracy, and from now on she can wear a sack for all anyone cares.