Jim Bunny Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

May it please your Majesty?
You might say… 'bit of a bummer old chap”.

And we might say: 'I am p#!*ed off!”

It's kind of how you would have felt when Harry pleaded with you not to marry the ‘third party'. Ouch! That must have chafed under the old coronation robes – some upstart, privileged ginga telling his dad, the man who can have anything, what to do?

My problem, old bean, is I haven't received my invite to your Coronation after-match function – The Big Lunch May 7. I trust this is just an oversight. Can you check the invite list please?

What particularly hurts is I had you and your sister at my gaff in Dunedin in 1970. I went all out and I was jolly well expecting the hospitality to be returned. You'll remember it well, of course. The Young People's Civic Luncheon at the University Students Union. What a venue! A big cold school hall with a lingering whiff of unwashed students and trestle tables. And what an occasion! One-and-a-half hours of cold cuts and potato salad and tiresome platitudes.

Anarchy

Then anarchy saved the day. While you were pushing your campylobacter chicken around your plate, 60 or 70 mischievous students were outside waving a Welsh flag and singing ‘Why was she born so beautiful?' Do you remember the funny bit when they sang: 'She's no bloody use to anyone, she's no bloody use at all”? I know Princess Anne doesn't do a good old belly laugh, but she was so po-faced. Those students just love a bit of irreverence, and she played right into their hands.

I know you and Sis are close, but what a right royal hoot. A good story for your polo mates over a 50/50 martini back in Blighty.

I recall Princess Anne wore her brown dress and crescent-shaped hat of gathered aqua chiffon that day. ‘Critic', the Otago Uni student newspaper, suggested, with typical cynicism, that your sister 'hid a nice-looking figure in lousy clothes”. Outrageous! Perhaps that's why I, and anyone else from Dunedin, hasn't made it on your ‘big bash' invite list? We're just so N.O.C.D – Not Our Class Darling!

The suit

I also bought a brown double-breasted pin-stripe suit, matching Chelsea boots, yellow shirt and paisley tie especially for the occasion – about $250 worth. I was earning $23.76 a week at the time, $10 of which went to my widowed Mum for board. And you were pulling the thick end of $30 million from the Duchy of Cornwall and the Sovereign Grant and probably getting free board. So you might like to send me a couple of return business class air tickets too?

I really turned it on for you in Dunedin, Charles. ln the morning you visited Wakari Hospital – chatted with the ill, the infirm and the incapacitated, got all their misery first-hand. That would have set you up, because anything that followed that day would have been a doddle by comparison.

Like visiting the university library, the chemistry labs and the home science school. What was the point of that for a man who's never had to cook himself a meal in 74 years? Then the pièce de résistance – a gift copy of the recently-published Otago University's centenary history. Feel the excitement! A couple of pages of that every night and you wouldn't have trouble sleeping.

Quiche? Really?

And what's with the quiche Chuck? Quiche the signature dish at the Big Royal Lunch – really? Quiche to usher in a bold new era for the monarchy? Quiche is just flash bacon and egg pie. We leave the top off the pie, turn the eggs to sludge, add a couple of tinned asparagus spears and a side salad, and charge three times as much.

Besides ‘quiche' is from a German word – ‘Kuchen' or cake. Then the French refined it to ‘quiche Lorraine'. You Brits have had your share of bother with both that lot. So why quiche? Why not something quintessentially Pom like a toad-in-the-hole? Or we could put down a hangi at Buck Pal? Do you have good basalt or andesite rocks over there?

If you are set on finger food, we do very good cheese rolls over here – we could even bring our own Maggi onion soup mix and Mainland tasty. And there's a bloke called Frank Nagel out of Paeroa who does a very good frankfurter. Can't go wrong with a hotdog. Just add HP or Branston for that English flourish. Easy clean-up too.

I know this is all a bit of a faff.

But, Your Majesty, you can see I have embraced the new monarchy like a religious convertee. I deserve to be with you as you set out on this journey, Chuck.

I have the honour to remain, Sir, Your Majesty's most humble and obedient subject.

JB

PS – I am watching my letterbox.