Friday 1 May 2015

I'm British - allegedly...

Living outside your country of origin for more than a short while is a useful exercise inasmuch as it allows you to re-evaluate exactly what it is about 'home' that matters.

A case in point; last Thursday, Boy #2's piano teacher - a Russian - asked me excitedly if I knew if it had been born yet.

I beg your pardon?

I genuinely had no clue what she was talking about.

We don't have cable, you see.  And whilst I follow the news from home, read the newspapers online, listen to the radio etc, it seems I filter a lot more than I realised.  I only click on items that I have any real interest in.  Like, politics.  Social commentary.  Lifestyle.  Entertainment.  Education.  World events.

Not, it seems, what is happening in the UK's royal family - who I had completely forgotten are expecting a new addition some time soon.

Oops.

And the funny thing is, I have no beef with the Windsors.  I'm not in favour of the UK becoming a republic, and I think our monarchy works; it fulfils a parliamentary purpose, they (mostly) work hard, and in general are an attribute that I'm perfectly happy to support through the civil list.

But I don't actually care about their personal lives, so much.  I wish them well, of course.  I hope that everything goes smoothly for Kate and William with the birth of the new baby.  But it doesn't occupy my mind (or didn't, until I started to write this post) to the extent that non-British people I encounter seem to be occupied by this.  It never ceases to amaze me how fascinated some of them are by our Royal Family, to be honest.

So I wonder: there's the world media's representation of what's going on back home, and then there's Real Life.  I know that of course there are royalist die-hards camped out by the hospital where the new baby is due to be born, but is the Royal Baby something that is top of mind for those of you reading this from within the UK?

(And is it unrealistic of me to say that I really hope that it isn't?)

6 comments:

  1. I'm not in the UK, but I can report that it's not a thing in Belgium. Or with me.

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  2. United we stand, Mwa!

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  3. I confess I am just a bit excited about the baby. I'm rather surprised that I am. Maybe it's because the rest of the news is all election, election, election, and a baby makes a nice change of focus.

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  4. As I write, the baby has just been announced and I haven't switched the TV on yet. In the USA, the news reporting tends to depend on what else is going on. They seem only capable of covering one story at a time. Unless you go BBC World News of course.

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  5. Well, I don't know very many British subjects yet, but none of the ones I know mentioned it or brought it up in conversation at all, and we certainly weren't paying attention. On the other hand, many/most of my friends in the US were up to the minute on all of the details, and a number of them even knew what the odds were on all the potential names for the baby. I was surprised at the number of people who found the event important enough to announce it on FaceBook, as if they had some sort of connection.

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  6. Nappyvalleygirl5 May 2015 at 13:15

    I was working on bank holiday Monday and was surprised to get an email from a US per person that started "Now that the baby has been named...". I had literally just been on Twitter (not, I hasten to add, looking for that particular story) and no mention of it, so she must have been hanging on a thread for it to be announced. My general feeling is that American friends on Facebook seem to be much more excited than anyone in the UK, who tend to post sarky comments like "Woman has baby."

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