Day Five from Melissa

Pink?  Blue?  Pink?  Blue?

This morning, I woke up when the girl in the bunk next to mine announced, "Kate just went into the hospital.  She's in labor."

That woke everybody up better than any alarm clock.

Hopefully she'd have the baby sometime today!

Miriam and I and two of our friends went to Portobello Road.  It's a street market type of thing.  Imagine Provo's Freedom Festival, in the area right around the courthouse.  Now imagine all those stalls lined up down a narrow street on both sides; only without any Mexican or Native American influence, and a lot of cheap London souvenirs, silver, hats, and antiques thrown in.

There.  That's Portobello road.  I actually have my eye on some of the used book places - I'll have to go back.

We spent most of the morning wandering down the road.  There was plenty to see, and it was after noon by the time we decided to go back and have lunch.  We passed the walk deciding whether the new royal baby was going to be a prince or a princess, and what the name would be.  My guess: boy, even though I wanted a girl.  We planned to try to see a museum, and then catch the Evensong service at St. Paul's Cathedral at 5:00.

It didn't quite happen.

Taking off my coat, I casually looked up online to see if there was any news of the baby.  To my shock, I discovered she'd actually had it not long before we'd left for Portobello road in the first place!

Even more exciting: the baby is a princess.

I bolted up the forty-six steps to my room to tell the other girls.  This was too exciting to keep to ourselves!  We had to see what the rest of London was doing!

Amy looked up the hospital, and we set off.

To my delight, the hospital had pink flags fluttering from the sides.  As we went in, we found cameras and observers already watching.

Here's where I noticed an interesting feature of the crowd.  They were quiet.  There was very little talking, no goofing off, few joking cheers.  They just stood and waited.

Well, when in Londinium, do as the Londonites do.  Crowding in, we found ourselves a place along the sidewalk - and started to wait as well.  Hopefully somebody from the palace would come visit or something.

I don't know how long we waited, and suddenly the door opened and out stepped Prince William!  He stepped across, hopped into a car, and drove off.  I actually could not see him - too many news cameras in the way, but Miriam could, and got a video.  It's a bit long, but shows the situation and the confusion.  Listen to the ladies in the background try to figure out what is going on.  That's how we were feeling.  Was Kate not coming out?  Was he going home?

We decided to go eat, since we'd never had dinner, and the show appeared to be over.  Some camera crews were packing up their equipment and leaving.  As we stepped away, I read on my phone that William had gone to pick up his son George.  And just as we read that - back came the cars!  We ran back to the road and caught a glimpse of William through the car window as they passed.  I could hear the cheers as he and George got out - but couldn't see, again.

Going back to my phone, we read that Kate's hairstylist had arrived earlier.  Suddenly things became interesting - she wouldn't need a hairstylist unless she was planning on going somewhere, would she?  The time was ticking closer to when we needed to leave for the service at St. Paul's, and we needed to make a decision.

We finally decided to stay, but crossed the road and found a better position.  After all, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  The other three girls climbed up on a metal barrier, but I wasn't too sure of my balance, so I stood on a lower metal pipe.  Miriam had my camera, so half of the pictures here were taken by her.

A Study in Feet

Have you ever read Bluebeard?  It's an old fairy tale, and in part of it, the sister on the ground calls to her sister in the tower, "Sister Anne, Sister Anne, can you see anything yet?"  That's how I felt.  "Miriam, what's happening?"  "Miriam, have they closed the road?"

You see, as we stood and waited, we got things figured out.  Whenever official cars would come through, the road would be blocked off, and guards would usher people out of the glass bridge across the road, leading from one side of the hospital to the other.  So we watched for the signs and the bomb-sniffing dogs (I assume that's what they were), and waited.

At one point, we thought "This is it!  This is it!" - and then some random person hopped out of the car and took in a baby carrier.  Rumors circulated - Prince George had been sent home by another route, Kate would come out at 5:20, Kate would come out at 6:30...

Miriam and the other two on the barricade.

Suddenly, they brought the police dogs out again, the road closed, and the policemen redoubled their focus.  Two black cars started coming down the street, very slowly, and the media people surged to their feet, readying their cameras and straightening their ties.  There had been so many false starts.  Nobody was sure - and then the doors opened.

Prince William, Duchess Kate, and the brand-new baby princess appeared on the front step.

Here is Miriam's footage.  You're missing the initial surge and dull roar that rose.  Actually, I'm wondering how much of the crowd noise was made by Americans.  The crowd had been well behaved at the beginning, but as more and more tourists joined, things became a little more rowdy, in comparison.  It was still very calm, until they came out those doors.

I was one of the many people who watched their royal wedding,a couple years ago.  But I watched it on TV.  Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be standing at the hospital, watching them leave with their new daughter.  I am one of the first several hundred individuals to see the new princess with my own eyes.  

Staggering.  I have such a strange life.

Of course Kate looked amazingly lovely for having just had a baby, and after standing in the doorway for photographs, they went back inside for a minute, then returned, got in the car, which had joined them at the door, and drove off.

And that was it!  After four hours of waiting, we'd seen what we'd scarcely hoped to see.

Tired, footsore and thrilled, we went on a hunt for dinner.  We found it at this fascinating little place called ffiona's.  

No, that is not a typo.

It was the most fascinating spot.  The ceiling was papered with pages of sheet music, and ffiona herself came out to talk with us.  Apparently in Welsh, "ff" is the second letter of their alphabet, and used to make the "fffffff" sound that we use the letter "f" for.  She was very pleasant, and told the most remarkable story about music.

Some years ago, the Irish rugby team had beaten the English rugby team, and as a result, she had a room full of "drunk Irish."  Now, bear in mind - I'm using a little of her terminology here, but trying not to be offensive.  I know perfectly well that all Irish are neither drunk nor looking for a fight.  Bear with me.

At another table, she had an Italian family, who didn't speak English, and at the last table, she had another group of non-Irish men.  Apparently the Irish in the restaurant had bad feelings towards these men, and the situation escalated to a concerning level.  A fight was going to break out any minute, and she knew it.

Trying to calm them down, she suggested that they make music requests of the accordion player she had as live music that evening.  Two of the non-Irish men mentioned that they were opera singers, and she challenged them to sing.

I can't remember the name of the first song, but by the second song, Ave Maria, she said that tears were streaming down the Italians' faces, and the belligerent men on both sides of the room had calmed to the point you could have heard a pin drop.

"Music can change the world," she told us firmly.  "Music can make peace."  

"It made peace in here."