subscribe
/ Sign Out

Your seven-day guide to how this Jubilee bullshit plays out

THERE’S a full week of Platinum Jubilee bollocks ahead, and it gets worse from today onwards. This is how it’s going to go: 

Monday

Arrive at work feeling vaguely patriotic, as after all it’s a three-day week. Union Jack bunting in workplace. Vera Lynn playing in canteen. Spam fritters on canteen menu. Start to feel dread.

Tuesday-Wednesday

Patriotic fervour gathering pace. Entire world waiting to see how Meghan ruins it this time. Jubilee on telly confined to breakfast TV and The One Show, but swelling alarmingly. No work can be done.

Thursday

Jubilee fever breaks. Flick telly on after a lie-in and it’s Trooping the Colour, which has been on your entire life and you’ve never understood. Stock up on Union Jack paper plates and plastic bowler hats before a show about lighting Jubilee beacons around the world. Try to imagine this pleasing you if you were the Queen.

Friday

With a Platinum Jubilee service on BBC1 like it’s f**king Christmas, you battle a HMS Victory Naval Strength Gin hangover. See Prince Andrew next to his mother in the church and throw up into the kitchen bin. All radio stations broadcasting timeline of Queen’s achievements, all the time.

Saturday

Awake hoping that since the two days off are over, so’s the Jubilee. A documentary about the Jubilee pudding proves you wrong. Everything you see is now red, white and blue. Walking to the shop for beer, you hallucinate Suez Crisis victory parades and the Red Arrows.

Platinum Party at the Palace kicks off. Prince Andrew takes centre-stage for the We Will Rock You guitar solo, announcing ‘I’m back, babyyyy,’ as his approving mother looks on. Time ceases to have meaning. Is it the Coronation? Is this the first time you’ve seen a colour TV?

Sunday

You awake to the sound of your bedside table solemnly narrating the Queen’s annus horriblis. The wallpaper are showing Silver Jubilee parades. The kettle is reminding you she was nicknamed Lilibet.

The street party begins, as exhausted Britons summon the strength for one more tribute. Passes in a blur of warm lager and weak drizzle. Propose a toast to ‘Her f**king Madge’, to cheers. Vomit into plastic Union Jack bowler hat. Hope she hangs on for the rest of the year because you can’t handle this again.

The reasons why I, a 40-year-old single man, cannot date a woman aged over 27

I AM in the prime of life. It behooves women to understand, therefore, that I cannot date them if they are fewer than 13 years my junior. Let me explain: 

I’m young at heart

Unlike my peers, obsessed with their stock portfolios and their flourishing careers, I have a youthful, fresh outlook on life. Like a much younger man I go out, coked up, drinking heavily and leering: what all my friends ‘got out of their systems in 2006.’ How can I be with some old maid of 32, watching her embroidering while she descales her feet?

I’m not ready to settle down

Women over 27 want ‘relationships’ or ‘children’ or to be ‘more than just a booty call’. I prefer women who’ve never considered kids and dump them at the first tick of the biological clock. No babe’s trapping me in a loving, nurturing marriage and family. But also I won’t have a vasectomy.

My type is younger, hotter women

As we’ve got older, my mates have continued to fancy women their own age. Makes no sense. Biologically men are built to want to sleep with fertile-looking women, which means size eight glamour models in their early-to-mid twenties. Don’t deny me living as my authentic sexual self.

Half-your-age-plus seven

It was once English law that you were allowed to date only girls half your age, plus seven. We were a great country then. A women aged 41 came on to me the other week. Honestly it was grotesque.

They get me

These girls really are just on my level. Going on dates with a 30-year-old, it’s all arthouse film this, nice bottle of wine that. I’ve been dating long enough to know how it’s done. Nandos, Marvel movie and then back to mine to watch me play guitar until she agrees to f**k me if I’ll stop.

Next story ›