Two boys missing Diana ...and another mother all alone CORRECTIONS CLARIFICATIONS
THE first big ‘ahh’ of the day came when Prince Harry and Prince William walked side by side to St George’s Chapel in the grounds of Windsor Castle. Watching on screens along the route, or on their phones and tablets, many spectators remembered the day they walked together, as forlorn little boys behind the hearse carrying their mother, Diana.
The second came when the camera zoomed to a close-up on Meghan Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, fighting back tears before her daughter walked up the aisle. Alone in the absence of her ex-husband, she looked isolated and lonely, and the crowd decided someone cocked up by not seating someone next to her to hold her hand.
The joy of watching a royal wedding with the crowds on the street is the instant insight you get into popular opinion. Meghan’s dress was a lot simpler than expected, but the understatement won approval. Harry’s decision to keep the beard was another crowd pleaser, though all agreed he was right to have it trimmed like the topiary in the castle grounds.
They cheered everything that moved – mounted policemen and women, emergency service crews, even for dozens of camera crews swarming all over Windsor. When Meghan and Harry took their vows, they cheered. When they were pronounced husband and wife, they cheered louder. When a gospel group sang Stand By Me, they sang too, in what was, despite a massive security presence, a very relaxed day, helped by weather you couldn’t order if you tried.
The Irish were here too. Stacey McIntyre from Derry is doing a Masters in biology in Oxford, and left home at 6am with three friends to drive to see the landau carrying the newlyweds through the streets. Occupying a strategic corner, they were draped in their home flags – the Tricolour, the dragon of Wales, the saltire of Scotland, and the Australian flag. Stacey admitted she came ‘because my friends were coming’, but like everyone else, seemed caught up in the spectacle of the occasion.
Friends Mary Flannery, a retired nurse from Cornamona in Co. Galway, and Joan Forristal, a hairdresser from Co. Kilkenny, who both have lived in England for decades, decided to attend their first royal occa- sion because they too remembered Harry as a bereaved boy, and admired how he has spoken since of the great loss of his mother.
Mary’s son-in-law Cathal Sweeney from Kimacrennan in Co. Donegal, owns an apartment on the procession route and they were going to watch from the window. I bumped into Neil Horan, the laicised dancing priest who disrupted the British Grand Prix, the marathon at the Athens Olympics, and was on Britain’s Got Talent. A believer in the impending apocalypse, he carried a large banner that said: ‘Queen Elizabeth II is very likely the last monarch of Britain. Since Christ is likely to come back soon.’
Helpfully, he put his mobile number at the end of the poster, which no doubt proved useful for the police, who prefer it when he stays far away.
As for the crowd, well, the big moment they all had queued for finally came, though those who slept outdoors for two nights to see it up close wasted their time. I arrived just after 8am, following a 3km walk from the traffic cordon, wandered unhindered and selected my spot for the procession just minutes beforehand. It started with a rumble that gradually became a roar and suddenly the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex were passing by just a few metres away, he with the slightly awkward diffidence of his father, she with a megawatt Hollywood smile. It took mere seconds but the crowd, an estimated 100,000 of them, got what they came for, another episode in the world’s longest-running soap, and one with a happy ending.