Royal Wedding and FA Cup Soccer on the Very Same Day

5/19/2018

In Deepest Pennsylvania, ladies dressed up for the big event. Hostess borrowed daughter's Prom Queen tiara.

Check out the colorful outfits. Listen to the music. Pay attention to the message of inclusivity.

I am speaking here of the international flavor of the FA Cup Final on Saturday from sunny Wembley.

Chelsea – owned by a Russian, coached by an Italian – beat Manchester United -- owned by an American and coached by a Portuguese – by a 1-0 score -- on a penalty kick by a Belgian.

The FA Cup is one of the more romantic club championships in the world (even as FIFA threatens to pollute football with an extravagant quadrennial club tournament.)

Talk about democracy: the FA Cup tournament began last summer with amateurs and semi-professionals and other back-benchers but competition eventually produced two finalists from the top third of the Premier League, or as they say at Windsor, la crème de la crème.

The FA final was held after the royal marriage had taken place earlier, so that one great event did not intrude upon the other. (Anybody go to both?)

The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, an American actress of biracial background, was a blend of royal tradition with a warm sermon by an American clergyman quoting Martin Luther King, plus that old English cathedral favorite, “Stand By Me,” written by Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The queen's chaplain, born in Jamaica, and a 19-year-old cellist from Nottingham but clearly also of African descent, added to the new feeling of inclusion.

The buzz of the wedding inspired Lourdes, a friend in Manhattan, to prepare a veddy English tea for the big event. And in Deepest Pennsylvania, a group of women donned millinery in the murky dawn to watch the great event.

Not everybody was charmed. I checked in with a favorite relly, Jen From Islington, to see if she was watching. “Nah,” she wrote back. But then she checked a few photos on line and was inspired to write: “Underwhelmed by it all. Esp. since I learned they invited 1800 of the wretched of the earth to Windsor to watch but failed to provide them with a packed lunch. If you are having a party, have a party, I think. Don’t have a pay-as-you-go bar, or make people kick in for the cake.
But then, I am a republican. xxJ.”

At the very least, the royals may be catching up with soccer, which has gone international in recent generations, with the old dump-and-chase English style made irrelevant by ball skills and intricate passing and devastating marksmanship, as performed in the Premier League by some of the greatest players from around the world.

(The influx of world-level players does not seem to rub off on English players, who have qualified for the upcoming World Cup – better than some nations I could mention -- but are not likely to be around long.)

(On the official Chelsea roster, 21 of 27 players are from outside England; on the official Man U roster, 19 of 27 are registered with other national federations.)

Presumably, this international flavor will continue after the implementation of Brexit diminishes the quality of life -- and probably football -- in Great Britain.

Somebody has to make Britain great again. On FA Cup final Saturday, Harry and Meghan did their bit.

Lourdes in Manhattan set a fancy table for tea.

John McDermott

5/19/2018 04:15:23 pm

I like the Queen. I spent a few hours once following her around at very close range and can attest that she is indeed very cool. I like Harry too and find him really refreshing, not unlike his Mom. Meghan seems really cool and they are lovely together. But all things considered, I'm with Jen from Islington. As for the FA Cup Final. Rubbish. Hard for me to watch any team managed by the odious Mourinho. Just finished watching the German Cup Final which was a much better game, won by underdog Eintracht Frankfurt, 3-1. Now waiting for the German National Team to show up here for two weeks of training in my town starting on Wednesday. The Bayern contingent will arrive less than happy...

George Vecsey

5/20/2018 10:13:43 am

John: Interesting. I have never heard anybody say the Queen is cool. I like the Queen when she is played by Helen Mirren, cool and hot at the same time. But you were around the Queen, i'm guessing on photog assignment, and I know your instincts are good. Marianne was around Princess Anne, wearing Wellies on a frightful muddy Henley day; thought she was quite real. And Emma Thompson (be calm, my beating heart) had nice things to say about her pal Charles in some book I read about the monarchy. So you never know. Grazie, GV

Brian Savin

5/19/2018 10:36:31 pm

OK, George, you got me. What the hell is a “veddy”? Is it some Queens street slang? The closest I can find is a short Ceylonese aboriginal tribe. Do they play soccer? Do they marry royalty? Is it a condiment for scones at high tea? I give up. Or as boys conceded defeat in my Father’s time, “Fins!”

George Vecsey

5/20/2018 10:08:04 am

Brian: You made me question why I wrote that, automatically. A Google search tells me that the perception of “veddy” is mostly a lasting American perception of the word “very,” based on the reality of pronunciations a generation or three ago. We think we hear it; but maybe we actually do. Check this site, but there are a dozen more explanations on the Web:
http://dialectblog.com/2012/01/10/was-there-a-veddy-british-r/
I think I am sensitive to British pronunciations (a) because me mum was born in England and retained some of the pronunciations (toe-MAH-toe), and (b) because for about 15 years my wife and I used to visit our friend Alastair who had retired to his beloved Wales. He had lived all over the world for BA, and was never happier than when he drove over the Severn River and said goodbye to “them” (the English) in his rear-view mirror. Alastair sang in a choir (all Welsh men do.) He had a great ear for British-isms, and did a wicked Charles. How I would have loved to watch the wedding yesterday with him, maybe having a pint at some pub along the Usk River in the Brecon Beacons. But inconsiderately, he dropped dead two decades ago, so I can only guess at his take on the royal wedding.

Brian Savin

5/21/2018 06:25:51 pm

George, you ARE a Noel Coward fan! I knew it. Good for you. I first read your comment quickly early this morning, so you might appreciate Noel's comment on early risings:
"Why is getting up at six o'clock in the morning like a pig's tail?"
His answer was, in the same vernacular as "veddy" -- "T(W)...RLY!"

bruce

5/22/2018 10:35:18 am

george,

didn't watch the wedding.

i'd like to see royalty die when liz does.

won't happen tho. has supporters in canada, but i think if canadians had a referendum, it would stir the separatist movement in quebec which is reaching all time lows.

aussies had a chance to deep six it, but screwed it up.

knew veddy right away. my paternal grandmother was a ww1 bride. never heard her say it tho.

i saw highlights of the preacher.

underwhelmed me.

saw a clip of liz, phil and will and they seemed the same. i thought i detected a kind of smirk on will's face.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Royal Wedding and FA Cup Soccer on the Very Same Day

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