'The shouting and the tumult dies...

...........the captains and the kings depart’...........

I confess that we only watched the highlights of The Wedding on BBC and CNN, but as expected it was the greatest show on earth. Significant, is it not, that the only things we seem to do well are those done by the only public servants who really know and care about their jobs – the Family and the armed forces. The cherry on the cake was when Wills and Kate went drive-about in Chuck’s open-topped Aston Martin. The security heavies must have been having kittens. And we are told that this was the first royal wedding at which friends outnumbered official guests. They included the village shopkeeper and his missus – Asian, of course – the village pub landlord, and the Sergeant winch-man from Will’s helicopter crew. Nice!

One of the amazing scenes was a single line abreast of police leading 500.000 people down the Mall to Buckingham Palace.

It is estimated that 1.5 million attended in total; there were about 55 arrests, mostly for booze-related offences. Quite astonishing. But it was very noticeable that whereas at Royal events in earlier times the streets were lined with bobbies looking outwards, this time they were armed, flak-jacketed police with machine guns and looking inwards. O tempores, o mores!

The climax to the show was the fly-past by two Tornados, two Typhoons, a Lancaster, a Spitfire and a Hurricane, the full-strength of the RAF post-cuts. Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Armchair RAF (ret’d) will favour us with his views on Channel 4 News.

The Labour party and its small number of supportive media tried to rain on the parade by yelling ‘Foul’ over the snubbing of Blair and Brown in not getting invitations. Amongst the hoi polloi there was little more than a chortle; these two gents are not top of the hit parade, and the story had no traction from the beginning. The Sunday Times reckoned that it was Chuck and Camilla who put the knife in.

I was delighted that the Middletons stayed at The Goring Hotel, my favourite in London. It was opened exactly 100 years ago and is still owned and run by the founding family, the Gorings. It was the first hotel in the world to be all bathroom en-suite. The food is some of the best anywhere, in a restaurant that was refurbished fairly recently. I don’t much care for the Swarovski chandelier, though.

It being a glorious sunny day we went for a spot of bird-watching and gentle exercise to a beautiful bay near home. We had it all to ourselves at first. Then a small camper-van drew up beside us, driven by a plump middle-aged lady. Then came a small scruffy van driven by a man of whom I took no notice. A little later while I was scanning the horizon with my binoculars I became aware of the distinctive sounds of female ecstasy coming from the camper. When I looked up I could see the van rocking forwards and back vigorously. I have no idea how long this continued as we had to leave, but at least 20 minutes.

When the sap is rising it is truly Spring.

To add to the gaiety of nations, it is reported that ‘Bad Hair Day’ Trump is unable to produce his own birth certificate. It seems that The Donald has been trumped!