“I Need To Stay Home And Feed The Chickens” Or How I Justified Staying Home To Watch “The Wedding”

It was the Friday following Easter Weekend, and my friends in my adopted homeland had spent the week bragging that they’d spent more time at home than at the office in the last 7 days.

What was the reason for this influx of bank holidays? Wills was getting hitched.

Cue appropriate pomp and circumstance. And an embarrassing number of posts on my Facebook Wall asking how I was coping with the fact that my first teenage crush would be officially off the market by the end of the week.

I desperately wanted to stay home and watch the wedding. The still relatively new novelty of DSL meant I would be able to stream it Live. For once, time zones were due to be in my favour. But I was supposed to be at school. And my after-school clubs had finally picked up some momentum.

I was torn: Be a good PCV or indulge my inner Anglophile.

I was up late debating my proposed course of action with a similarly conflicted PCV on the computer. It was approaching midnight and I was still undecided. It’s not every day a Prince gets married. But the prospect of having more than two kids show up to club for more than two days in a row doesn’t happen every day either.

Then my landlady came bustling into the room:
LL: Melissa. That was my son. I need to go take care of his kids. He has to go to Baku tomorrow. He’s coming right now to pick me up.
M: Oh. Is everything OK?
LL: Would it be OK if you stayed home and fed the chickens and watched the dogs tomorrow? I know you are supposed to go to school, but I don’t want the dogs to be left unattended all day.
M *trying to sound at least a little bit put out*: If you need me to I will. They won’t miss me for a day.

When I relayed the conversation to my friend, she laughed and observed that only in Azerbaijan would keeping an eye on chickens and house-pets be an acceptable excuse to skip school.

So I got my justification in the end, and I spent all day Friday in front of my computer watching the BBC’s Live Feed of The Wedding accordingly, after making sure the chickens and dogs were fed and watered.

My Thoughts:
- I want an excuse to visit a haberdashery, mostly because haberdashery is such an awesome word.
- Pippa had the nicer dress. Harry had the nicer uniform.
- I muddled ‘God Save the Queen’ with ‘My Country ‘Tis Of Thee’, but cried during ‘Jerusalem’
- I think the Duke of Carrickfergus (or however you spell it) is quite possibly the best title ever.
- I want a yellow search and rescue helicopter to do a fly by during my honeymoon send-off.
- Dear Woman In The Crowd: It is not OK to cut up flags to make a dress! At least not where I come from (maybe I’m not as British as I pretend to be after all)