Only a week or so to go now until the Royal Wedding and the planning is in overdrive.
The main type of celebration being organised seems to be the street party. As a local event, it ticks lots of boxes — it’s the perfect mixture of neighbourly camaraderie, national pride and British tradition, all rolled into one. My village is organising one, as is my son’s school for the day before. I’d better get a paper hat strong enough to last for a couple of days of partying!
Trestle tables and Union Jacks
The idea of dragging tables into the road and getting all the neighbours out of their houses to a communal sit down meal is not a new one. They seem to have been formalised in July 1919 as ‘Peace Teas’ — a celebration of the signing earlier in June of the Versailles Peace Treaty. The focus was on children getting a decent plateful in a time of hardship and the meal was a relatively formal affair. Since then, street parties have evolved into a more relaxed event and have been held at coronations, royal weddings and jubilees, as well as being part of the millennium celebrations. The picture is one of trestle tables, Union Jack bunting, bring and share food and party hats. The message is clear — there’s a national holiday and no one will need to drive anywhere, so let’s reclaim the streets for the community. Let’s enjoy ourselves!
Health and safety?
If you want to organise a street party in the world of 2011, there are many more things to think about these days. There are forms to fill in and health and safety regulations to consider. What happens if the emergency services need to access the road you have closed off? Do you have the correct Temporary Events License to allow the sale of food and drink? What are the legal implications of salmonella poisoning contracted from your well-meaning egg mayonnaise sandwiches? Are you obstructing a bus route? Where will you relocate if it rains?
Although there have been royal weddings since that of Charles and Diana in 1981, it is this forthcoming marriage of William and Kate that has provoked the strongest national desire to replicate the celebrations that surrounded his parents’ wedding. Anyone over 40 will have strong memories of that day, almost exactly 30 years ago, with the excitable television coverage, the golden carriage, the incredible and enormous dress. It’s inevitable that our nostalgia will lead to a desire to celebrate once again, even though the memories will resonate strongly with our knowledge of the terrible times that followed in that marriage.
There are plenty of great opportunities that are likely to come out of the royal wedding.
Alongside the neighbours
The street party will encourage plenty of opportunities for us to get to know our neighbours and others in the local community. We all suddenly have something in common and something to talk about which will hurdle all of our differences. We will have the hot topic of marriage and its relevance today to discuss, the fun nostalgia of the past to reminisce over, the future of the royals to surmise about. For many it will be the beginning of another long weekend off work and spring will hopefully be well underway. Perhaps the precise timing of The Wedding has been carefully calibrated to coincide with generally positive feelings about life being good?
There will be many hopes expressed about William and Kate. The media will find it impossible not to compare them with Charles and Diana in many ways on their Big Day. So we hope that they will be loving and faithful to one another. We hope that she will cope with the media pressure.
They are hopes that are expressed with grim smiles since we know that no one is immune from troubles in this world. It is fascinating to reflect on this in the context of Easter, to consider what sure, certain hope actually is: ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade’ (1 Peter 1.3-4).
