Oh, my goodness! There is light after the dark. Well, the sun has broken through, the wind has dropped and the deep blanket of snow is melting rapidly. It is a strange feeling, as though the world has risen, triumphant, from the grasp of an evil spirit. No doubting that but all confidence has gone. Is this a sign that normality will return or has life, as we knew it, changed forever? A year of constant scaremongering by the media is not without effect. Anxiety abounds where once there was none; fear awaits round every corner. Those who, blindly, accept assume the mood instructed. Those who continue to question observe and digest with a scepticism borne of a need for answers; justification for the loss of liberty – the right to choose. What does it all mean? I wish I knew. Only time will tell. For now, I see nothing which resembles the world which stopped in March 2020.
My mind races, trying to make sense of it all. What have I learned from a year’s imprisonment? Probably how easy it is to morph into a recluse! To be honest, no huge strides for me there. People, collectively, have never been my favourite things but, catching up with an old friend, last night, who used to positively thrive, socially … well, those days are gone. The very mention of easing lockdown brings her out in a cold sweat as she contemplates a plethora of invitations and her inability to refuse! Lost me, there. However, she must be representative of so many. So many whose confidence has been shattered and, for whom, home has become the only safe haven; familiar, affording protection from a big, bad world and the invisible danger beyond. Help! Mass agoraphobia. Part of a master plan?
Seriously, talk about unknown territory: the aftermath. I ventured to the beach, this afternoon, only to discover the waves, literally, lapping the dunes. I don’t think I can ever remember the tide so far in. Momentarily, free, the sand was strewn with the debris of seaweed and broken shells paying no heed to passing footprints. (Why is it that shells, so beautiful in situ with a lustre befitting their wondrous journey, seem to ‘die’ when removed from their natural environment? Rhetorical. The same could be said of wild animals in a zoo …) The waves were strong, forceful in their dominance as Nature reclaimed the sand, reminding visitors of their place. I wanted to sit and soak it all in, to really listen but … today, I didn’t belong. Nobody did. The beach was demanding of peace. I walked a short distance but turned as I saw others coming towards me. If they had listened, truly listened, they, too, would have turned and left Nature to the solitude it craved.
So, down to the nitty gritty. In a bid to step away from the white stilettos, let me ponder on Harry and Meghan! Avoiding television and radio news, like the plague, I do, however, subscribe to The Telegraph, online, and, thus, am still inundated with emails. So it was that I received the headline announcing the news of a second child for the ‘publicity-shy‘ couple. Oh, gosh! For Harry, I shall always have a soft spot but … this is embarrassing! Every part of it is cringe-worthy: completely staged, the black and white photograph of a barefooted, casually-dressed Harry cradling Meghan’s head in his lap as she reclines, holding her bump, beneath a tree in the vast garden of their £11million LA mansion is nothing more than a re-enactment of the final scene in Notting Hill. No surprise, either, that the photographer is Misan Harriman, the first black, male photographer to shoot a British Vogue cover. It makes complete sense. On the other hand, it makes no sense.
Harry’s fate should be a lesson to all; the power of women. That may seem rich coming from me but I have seen, first hand, the damage caused by women in jostling for proof of allegiance. The age-old, unspoken friction between mother and future daughter-in-law – perhaps, more spoken, in my own experience, with a mother-in-law who made clear, from the start, that she was taking no prisoners! Then, in the case of my brother’s first betrothal – agreed doomed by all – my mother, in treating me as collateral damage, served only to expose her long-held jealousy of me, her daughter, a mistake which would forge an irreversible fault line through our family, eventually to destroy. Yes, the power of women, never to be underestimated … Harry is devoted to his mother’s memory but, sadly, she is just that: a memory. Diana is no longer here. Meghan has a free rein and, boy, is she using it to her advantage! Less than three years on since their wedding of great promise, Meghan is exactly where she planned in her coveted multi-million-pound mansion, married to the world’s most popular prince – and the mother of his soon to be two children – a union which just happens to open every door of celebrity and command the lucrative rewards she strove so hard to achieve. Job done. Supposedly beaten by the ‘undeserved‘ mauling at the hands of the UK press, all she sought was a life of privacy with her new husband and child … So, of course, bruised and battered, she manipulated an exit from the Royal family – extricating Harry from all who made him – and crossed the pond to La La Land to sign multi-million-pound deals with Netflix and Spotify!
Who cares? I do, for Harry. What of his blood family? Those who nurtured him after the death of his mother? His brother? His brother’s children? His own children who, if Meghan has her way, will be closer to Oprah and Serena Williams than their cousins, travelling the world by private jet while citing their allegiance to the fight against global warming … Meghan has succeeded in turning Harry’s life into one great big contradiction. He is a necessary pawn in her master plan but at what cost? Is that love or just a haunting echo of ‘whatever love means?’
‘Family is the most important thing in the world.’
Princess Diana
Poignantly, she still believed …
This is Trish, signing off.
