The Miami royal wedding

Thirty years ago, when our current Prince Charming’s father got married, I was living in Florida, where my dad was constructing the Metro-Dade rapid transit system. The family was used to living in funny places, having spent the previous five years in and around the Middle East, and the decade before, in Australia. We moved to Miami straight from Pakistan, and we kids were delighted to be in a country where blonde teenage girls were not regarded as exotic objects (merely the pests they are) and global fast food outlets replaced the rather more homespun stalls of the streets of Islamabad. The best place for us was the drive-thru Burger King, where we always had to repeat the order, because the lady serving ‘loved our accents’.

The only problem was that, patriots to the last, we would not be in England for the wedding of the century, but fortunately the American TV networks promised full coverage. It would just mean getting up at 5 am to view it all.

Our American neighbours were keen to watch the wedding with us, because, as Brits, we would obviously be experts. Luckily, we are. The family is ingrained with a deep sense of history, and my mother will never dine out anywhere unless there is a strict order of precedence and a Top Table for her to sit at.

Sporting new gold crowns from Burger King, my parents entertained the neighbours with stories of the Coronation (my granny won a WI * lottery and slept out in the Mall **), a military inspection by the Queen Mother in 1962 when they were in the TA*** as students, and showed them a picture of my uncle meeting the Queen just four years earlier. In Miami in 1981, that just about made us royalty.

The only question we couldn’t answer satisfactorily was why Diana was going through with it. The neighbours were entranced by the beautiful Lady Diana Spencer, and despite our assurances that she would be a marvellous queen because she came from the nobility and would know what’s what, and the whispered asides that surely untold wealth must be an important factor in their relationship, they still could not understand it. Rather indignantly, we asked what was wrong with Prince Charles, a perfectly decent chap, as the parents confidently said.

Bluntly, the neighbours said it was his ears and they wondered aloud why Diana was not opting for Prince Andrew instead.

They really didn’t get it, so we told it to them straight. Prince Andrew may have had neater ears and a cheesier smile, but as number one son, Charles would get the throne. The neighbours shrugged and remarked that perhaps the ears would help the crown stay on securely.

Thirty years on, Prince Andrew’s charms have faded, and although Charles hasn’t yet tested the crown-bearing utility of his ears, he’s still in pole position for the throne.

Notes for foreigners

* The WI is the Womens’ Institute, a doughty voluntary organisation involving jam and Jerusalem.

** Pronounced ‘Mal’ to rhyme with ‘Hal’, the Mall in London is the road from Buckingham Palace to Admiralty Arch and Trafalgar Square. There are no shops on it.

*** TA – Territorial Army, Britain’s part-time volunteer soldiers.