Duncan Harley

The blogosphere, and indeed the mainstream media, are all over the royal wedding this weekend and why on earth not. I mean, this is the media event of the decade and, if the pundits are to be taken seriously, then around 86% of the British public are lauding it for the royals. The other 14% are no doubt secretly sneaking a wee look at the endless re-runs and I know I was one of them. That is, until Janice made an appearance at which point we watched until the very end taking only a few well spent hours out to attend the BA Vintage Country Fair over at Dunecht. Then it was back for chips and a few feet up on the settee for more of the royal highlights. That’s the beauty of this digital age really. You can miss the footie or indeed the wedding of the year then do a seamless catch-up later in the day. We saw that royal kiss, or was it a pair of kisses, endless times and spotted Charles leading his future daughter-in-law down the aisle on at least a hundred news clips. Then there w...

Richard Morrison writes in today’s Times in Scotland about how the about to be wed royal couple can learn a thing or two from long dead poet Philip Larkin. Seemingly the Windsor wedding day falls on Whit Saturday and the theory, at least, suggests that the wearing of white is appropriate for the Pentecostal weekend. Larkin’s take on the state of marriage is, he writes, ‘really, a meditation on marriage and what lies ahead for the travelling couples’. As the wedding train finally arrives at its destination Larkin, always the pessimist perhaps, writes gloomily about ‘a sense of falling, like an arrow shower, sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.’ As for Whit Saturday. Well, Google directs searchers to White Saturday which is seemingly the day after Black Friday which is the day when stores hike up prices to a level to which only the rich can aspire. Google aside, Richard suggests that the church festival of Whit Saturday was in fact well known in those heady pre-Google days ...