Wedding, what wedding?

What with fortifying my home against tiny winged marauders; delving into the stickier points of maple syrup making; splashing about in moonlit creeks looking for tiny silver fish; and, gardening (I’ll get to that ongoing adventure in the next week or so), a couple of little events have slipped by almost unnoticed in the Jones household.

You Haliburtonians don’t miss a trick though and folks have reminded me of my civic duty to report on such matters.

And so, I cast my mind back a while to the, would they wouldn’t they? the guessing the date and who’d be invited to the party: the constant media agonising over whether they’d get along afterwards. Argh, the anticipation (yes, I meant to spell argh that way!).

When the big day finally arrived there was pomp and ceremony, coiffured hair, police escorts, fancy clothes, speeches, crying grandmas, coiffured hair, flag-waving babies, cheering crowds, champagne and celebration. Did I mention the coiffured hair?

Boy, you guys certainly know how to put on an election.

I’m afraid, or rather I’m absolutely elated that since moving from the bustling metropolis of Londinium to the relative wilds of Haliburton – since my immersion in all things local to my new locale – I have rather lost touch with the rest of the world.

I’ve got TV, radio, internet access, semaphore, smoke signals, all the gizmos – haven’t been brave enough to go ‘off grid’ like some of you folks – but I just don’t feel the urge to have an intravenous drip of news, views and spews from the world media 24/7. A couple of minutes of Mike Jaycock recounting the sports news over breakfast and I’m set for the day. On the radio, that is; I don’t invite him round specially!

News to me at the moment is the tree across the creek being blown over; the phoebes nesting in the woodshed; the honk of returning geese; and the ice finally going out, so the fishing can really begin.

It may sound like I’ve gone all R.D Lawrence on you. And may be I have but it’s a reaction to 15 years of being constantly pummelled by news. Radio stations with rolling newsflashes every few minutes. Wall to wall news networks on TV. Big screens in bars and stations that blared out the latest tragedy, while little screens on buses and tube trains inundated me and my hapless fellow travellers with feckless facts that I didn’t want or need to know.

The Times, Telegraph, Independent, Financial Times, Guardian, Sun, Star, Express and Mail - the UK’s national daily press. The Morning Metro and Evening Standard, plus a pile of other local papers as tall as your average blue heron, for London alone. A plethora of pulp faction, all destined for the recycle bin.

Exhausted by this onslaught, I’d lock myself in the loo for a quiet moment of self reflection, and what would happen? The next door neighbour would turn on the TV and I’d be privy to his news addiction through paper thin walls. In fairness, he’d also be able to hear my ‘thoughts’ on the matter as I flushed them down the pan!

And so you see, I missed the wedding. I awoke an hour after his royal baldness and commoner Kate had walked down the aisle. I breakfasted oblivious of the joyous celebrations being played out across London, England, the world (perhaps that’s stretching it a bit now-a-days). I just didn’t feel the need to turn on, tune in. I dropped out, so to speak (to misquote Timothy Leary). And you know what, I enjoyed it.

I have been quizzed on and received quizzical looks about my thoughts on the royal wedding. My accent it seems makes it mandatory that I should have a view (a ringside seat even!). And so, to satiate the calls for a statement (I believe that’s what they call them in the press): I wish good luck and long happiness to William and Kate.

I just hope they don’t mind if I can’t make it to their next garden party.