One of the people proof reading my gridded naval wargames book has sent me several pages of notes that I need to go through in detail so that I can correct the mistakes he has found. (The mistakes are mainly typos and sentences with mixed tenses.) I will then send him back the corrected proof so that he can do one final check before I have some proof copies of the book printed.

I also have to attend two Masonic meetings, one in London (this afternoon) and the other in St Albans (on Tuesday). The London meeting is a Third Degree ceremony, but due to the sudden and unexpected death of a senior member of the Lodge, I fully expect to be asked to take an active part in the ritual rather than sit on the sidelines as a spectator. The Tuesday meeting is the Installation of a new Worshipful Master into the chair of his Mother Lodge, and he invited me some time ago as he serves as the Inner Guard of the Hertfordshire research Lodge of which I am currently Worshipful Master.

In addition to all of this I am also trying to ensure that Wargame Developments (of which I am the Treasurer/Membership Secretary) is fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulations by the deadline … which is in four day’s time.

Have I taken things easy since I retired? I don’t think so!

Within about ten minutes of waking up this morning I realised that I didn’t have any work to do on my latest book. The draft text has gone off to my proof readers, I have already selected the photograph I want to use on the book’s cover, and the book’s blurb is ready. I am not yet in the mood to start my next writing project (it will be about the members of the Hertfordshire Masters’ Lodge who served during the First World War) and I just want to spend the day doing very little. Unfortunately for me this has happened on the day of a royal wedding and the Football Association Cup Final, which means that chilling out in front of the TV is going to be a bit of a problem.

Before I get accused by my wife and others of being a GOM (Grumpy Old Man), I would like to state that I have nothing against either Prince Harry or Meghan Markle, both of whom I am sure are nice young people, and I wish them a happy married life. I am glad that I live in a constitutional monarchy rather than an elected one (I have yet to see a republic where the President is not an elected monarch … some of whom have been ‘elected’ by a very small electorate indeed!) and I think that the majority of the Royal Family perform useful roles and help to boost the country’s tourist trade enormously.

What does annoy me about today’s royal wedding is the media hype and coverage that we have had to endure over the past few months, and particularly the last few days. It will culminate in what looks like blanket TV coverage on all the major channels, starting at around 9.00am and continuing for most of the morning and afternoon … and followed by edited highlights this evening. I may well watch the actual ceremony, and possibly the procession to and from St George’s Chapel, but do I really need to listen to all the ‘talking heads’ and interviews with people who are going to be in Windsor etc.?

Once the wedding is over, the TV coverage seems to be switching over to the next great ‘event’ of the day … the FA Cup Final. I used to follow football, but once big money got involved in the ‘sport’, I lost interest. Everything seemed to become a version of Moneybags United vs. Bigwallet City, where success appeared to be due to how much a team could spend ‘buying’ the ‘best’ players from around the world rather than nurturing local talent. The players and managers became ‘celebrities’ whose every action and opinion (or lack of opinion) was deemed worth of media coverage, and whose employment and importance seemed transitory at best.

Luckily I do have a few DVDs and the Talking Pictures Channel I could watch (the Talking Pictures Channel is owned by the British Film Institute and features lots of old black and white films from my youth and even earlier), and my wife has already intimated that there are several programmes on the Drama Channel she would like to see, so things might not be so bad after all … and if I cannot chill out that way, there is always the possibility of fighting a wargame.

Things are already looking better …