A Very Royal Announcement

 

                     I think it's fair to make the assumption that if you have internet access, you probably haven't spent the last few years crouched in a cave with your fingers in your ears, which means it's also fair to assume that you aware that the royal baby is due to pop out any moment now. Now, if you're anything like me, you halfheartedly watched Kate walk up the aisle in 'that dress', watched William and Kate say their 'I do's' and then wandered outside to the nearest street party to eat a little cupcake with ball bearings on top. You probably heard that Kate was expecting on the news, and joined in with the boy-girl debate from the sidelines, not really caring, but just needing a change of subject for conversation from the usual debates of who is the best-looking on Made in Chelsea. So it came as a shock to me when I found myself wondering how the birth of baby Cambridge would be announced, but if i'm honest, I was worried that I wouldn't know and would open myself up to ridicule on announcing 'I wonder when the baby will be born', three months after the birth. 

 So true to form, I decided that a little bit of research was in order, and I looked up how previous royal sprogs had been announced, and how that was going change with the overuse of the good old internet. Originally, the rules were set in stone on how to announce the birth, and when Edward VII was born to Queen Victoria in 1841, "This great and important news was immediately made known to the Town, by the firing of the Park and Tower guns."', as is so eloquently reported in the Gazette published that evening. But even before the Gazette had been published, word had spread,  as politicians were spotted pulling up at the palace gates, and it was this policy that almost acted as our good old internet- it let people know before they were meant to. This practice had been in place since a little mishap since the birth of King James' son in 1688, when somehow the rumor spread that the baby had been stillborn and another child had been smuggled in in a bedpan... funny people, the Stuarts. However, this method was thrown succinctly out of the window faster than my laptop when it isn't working, as King George VI decided it was archaic, and so the birth of Prince Charles was not officially witnessed by politicians (so lets not rule out the 'bedpan-baby' idea of previous years'. 

 Not all traditions die out, though and the publication in the good old gazette still continues, as well as the sign posted on the gates of Buckingham palace for all of you royalists who love to sit outside the palace and gaze dreamily at the gates. 

Although certain parts of tradition seem pointless now, some are still strictly adhered to, such as the official family photo, but we can be sure that news of the birth will spread throughout the internet like nits in a primary school. 

 So, hopefully you're a tiny bit more excited to see how this baby will be announced, and the boy-girl debate has lost its appeal after the statement declaring that whatever the gender, the baby will become the new monarch.  I suppose it's just a long wait for us now until Kate pops out the long-awaited sprog, and we can go back to our normal lives, although the part that has caught my interest may not be answered straight away- what will it be called? I doubt Chardonnay, Princess, or Rooney are on the list of potential names, but we will just have to wait and see. 

E.C