One of the best things about growing older is being far less easily embarrassed. You have dealt with so many potentially tricky situations so often that you breeze through, no longer blushing, staring at the floor or looking for the nearest exit. I feel sorry for the young when they make a small faux pas and are convinced that everyone in the room is staring, or worse, laughing at them behind their hands, whereas at my age you know that probably no one has even noticed. If they have, and they do stare, laugh or comment, you can handle that with aplomb, too.
The last time someone made a remark in a whisper so loud that I knew they intended me to hear was when I wore Nike trainers at an investiture. It was mine, and I had to stand in line before stepping up to the then Prince of Wales – before he was upgraded.
I cannot manage high heels any longer, probably because I wore them so rarely in the past that I haven’t had enough elderly balance practice, and flat shoes make me waddle, so unless it is boot weather my feet are very comfortable in trainers. I have many pairs in a variety of vivid colours but naturally I bought new, plain black ones for Windsor Castle. I was wearing my trusty smart black outfit, bought for a similar occasion ten years earlier, but I did splash out on new headgear. I had never had a Philip Treacy before and it made me feel a million dollars. It was remarked upon.
But while we were all waiting, I noticed that I was being stared at by a couple nearby, he in best military officer ceremonial, she in silk frock and feathery fascinator, and very suitable they looked too but clearly they did not think equally well of me because not only did they continue to stare but she said to him, clearly meaning to be overheard: ‘Is that woman wearing trainers?’
Imagine if I had been in my twenties and still easily mortified, because that moment was the very definition of wishing the ground would swallow you up. But I didn’t feel a thing. Instead, I first turned on her my most ingratiating smile, before whispering loudly back: ‘And they are so comfortable.’ I refrained from staring at her six-inch stiletto heels and adding: ‘You should try them.’
Naturally I bought new, plain black Nike trainers for Windsor Castle
Just before we glide away from embarrassments in royal palaces, a friend told me of one far worse. Her parents were friends of Queen Elizabeth and the whole family was invited to Balmoral for a weekend. After tea, in a place where ‘tea’ means a banquet of hot buttered everything and rich chocolate cake, games were proposed – indoors because it was pelting with rain and blowing a gale even harder than usual up there.
As various younger royals were present, they began with hide-and-seek and my friend shot off to find an obscure corner where she might escape for hours. She got lost several times but eventually went along an upstairs corridor and chose a door at the farthest end, which opened into a bedroom, clearly unused, complete with a four-poster. Pushing aside the draperies, she crept thankfully beneath it. As she did so, someone who had got there before her sneezed. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather dusty under here,’ said the Queen.
Being older doesn’t spare you from whatever makes your toes curl. Friends who arrive to stay, accompanied by their grim-faced children, bearing assorted violins and clarinets with which they are to entertain you. Weddings, where you are forced into photo-booths with men in shiny waistcoats, to be snapped making faces. Dinners at which ‘entertainers’ pop up while you are eating your pudding and thrust sausage-dog balloons into your face. Or, worse, those featuring stand-up comedians who are not in the least bit funny, who laugh at themselves to a silent audience. Being made to do any number of silly things at Christmas parties, joining in at the end of the Hokey-Cokey line being by no means the silliest.
I am told that stag parties are the worst events for this sort of thing, though I suspect large quantities of alcohol blunt the edge of any embarrassment at the time, and afterwards no one remembers. Young bridegrooms of my acquaintance have been forced to dress up in green tights and hats with feathers and run through the streets barefoot, then chained to lampposts at 2 a.m. and left there, having first had their eyebrows shaved off. It’s a good job they were drunk.
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