The w***ing whose name must not be mentioned

I'm going to attempt to go off and do a little work today, in the middle of a series of seemingly endless Bank Holidays. 'Work' will consist of turning up to a stone yard and trying to persuade some miserable stonemasons to cut the Portland Roach that I bought the other day into shape for me, so I can imbue it with added value. That is harder work than working, believe me.

H.I. also returns to start teaching today, but will not be teaching this friday because... now let me see, something's happening and I cannot for the life of me remember what it is. Something to do with a wedding... oh yes, I've remembered now. Every succeeding friday's teaching for her will be a little longer than normal for quite a while, in order to make up for the student's lost time for this one, and as they have already paid for it, H.I. is contractually obliged to make up the hours. Thousands - if not millions - of people's working lives are about to be disrupted across the country, because the happy couple have decided to get spliced on a friday, and not the traditional saturday which allowed working commoner's relations to attend the ceremonies in former times.

Rumour has it that David Cameron has made a rare trip up ('oop') North - before August 12th - in order to issue a proclamation that it is every subject's duty to celebrate the wedding in whatever manner is traditional in those regions; whether it be clog-dancing, 'stripping-the-willow', the public flogging of virgins, throwing cheeses down a steep ravine and breaking of one's legs by chasing them, granting Royal Pardons to condemned felons, or even the drinking of mead, ale or cider in places where it is normally outlawed on pain of the stocks - just so long as they make a jolly good show of looking like they are enjoying themselves.

Sales of Union Jack bunting have outstripped demand, and even the Royal Family of Bahrain have had the good grace to bow out of an invitation which was issued to them due to a clerical error committed by a junior member of the Royal Household. Entering into the spirit of the occasion, the normally taciturn factions of Northern Ireland are debating whether or not to lift a fatwa against a heinous war-crimes criminal on their 'most wanted' list, to mark the special day.

In an attempt to lift the spirits of the Nation and out-do a previous fairy-tale wedding (which turned out to be a bit of a depressing let-down), the bride will arrive at Westminster Abbey in a Nissan Micra as a commoner, and leave in a six horse-power, gilded carriage as a Princess.

There will be banquets and garden parties, followed by magnificent firework displays culminating - on the stroke of midnight - in a blood-stained sheet being hung out of one of the upper windows on the front of Buckingham Palace, where it will be dangled for precisely 32 seconds before being taken down to the laundry room in the basement, where the red liquid (bought from a joke-shop in Tottenham Court Road), will be washed off until the next time, in about 25 years.

At two minutes past midnight, the floodlights will be turned off, plunging the palace into darkness and depriving most of the former Colonies of real-time photo opportunities, thereby punishing the republicans for their disloyalty and treachery even as they sleep, and it serves them right, I say. At ten minutes past midnight, 7000 riot police will clear the streets of revelers with water-cannon, so that life may continue for the rest of us mortals the following morning.

I myself will have 3 rather than the normal 2 beers in the pub on friday - I can't wait!!!!