@MontereyJack,
Jack-- what did you make of the millions of man and woman hours of "work" which were obviously involved in the Royal Wedding when it is, as a scientific fact, a mere biological incident which can only be distinguished from taking a brood mare to a stallion by superstitious knuckledraggers of the most fundamentalist sort whose heads have been fucked off their shoulders by stirring music, dazzling colours, mob hysteria, mumbo jumbo, dignified arm movements, displays of economic waste, pomp, circumstance and secluded intermissions at intervals calculated by scientific observation to be congruent with the normal cyclical operations of the human bladder and the hunger reflex?
Do you think Prince Harry was trying to work out the best way to get the other Middleton wench, Pippa, into a quiet room at the Palace later in the day and giving her the what for? I would have been in his shoes. In my prime I mean, as he self-evidently is. It's an English tradition anyway almost verging on a human right in respect of Best Mans. Exceptions being allowed for virgin bridesmaids of course, when required, but I hardly think Pippa's friends would think it a consideration in this case. If ever there was a day of tradition this was it. Tradition is a sort of evolutionary alternative to consitutions. The latter involve some dramatic, thought up on the spot, mutation/s; usually for the benefit of the legal profession. Which might itself be a tradition but only of the materialistic plane whereas Tradition manifests itself in the sacramental depths and is never chiselled out in short, snappy sentences on blocks of stone nor on the cerebral cortex.
The World's love affair with English tradition is staring you in the face. There are no logical arguments valid to deny it.
And after all--for several years on Burns Night, accompanied by bagpipes, Pippa has carried the haggis into a pub called the Old Boot Inn at Stanford Dingley in Berkshire. And in 2008, Tatler magazine named her "the Number 1 Society Singleton", beating the singer-songwriter James Blunt and Princess Eugenie: which is going some I suppose. It is code for a lady having had more pricks than a second-hand dartboard.
Harry insisted on serving in Afghanistan. Squaddies in such a dump would supply him with an aspect of his education that had been neglected and which he felt might be useful to him.
The scene later in the evening when Harry finally goes over to the chief bridesmaid, who is sulking because he was playing snooker in the Palace Billiard Room all night, with a view to explaining his duty under the constitution, would be a great scene in a space-age movie. It would make a fortune and boost the US economy like The Grateful Dead did using the tradition that the cops don't bust anybody boosting the US economy. Never did as far as I can tell.
Buy the rights to the original footage, which is only a spool of repatterned electromagnetic tapes in a safe ( which in modern prose implies much more than a reinforced steel box with a fancy lock,).
Montage bits of it, in the first hour, with going up and down stairs, getting in and out of conveyances, walking alongs, and all the other stuff they pad movies out with. Then the Big Scene. Then the subsequent scandal when Pippa introduces Harry to traditions with a longer history than the squaddies know about. A blockbuster. With an obvious sequel.
Ideas drive economies.
