‘I was trolled online when I said I didn’t care about the royals’

The last 12 months have been great for raising the voice of the over-60s community at Starts at 60, something we feel strongly about doing. During the next few weeks we are celebrating the blogs that resonated with readers the most throughout the year. This blog is one of our Top 30 blogs for 2019.

I did not give a fig about the royal wedding last year, and now I feel somewhat the same about the expected royal baby. The media is in a frenzy about the impending birth. Who is going to get the first photo? Who cares!

Who is going to be the first to know? Obviously the couple themselves will be first to know, then I would expect the Queen and somewhere in there Meghan’s mother … Maybe her father.

Read more: ‘I don’t give a fig about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding’

There has been much hype about this baby, there was even talk of it before the wedding had been finalised. The talk fills the television screens, online news feeds and every imaginable newspaper/magazine. There is no escape … the radio blurts out news as well!

There are millions of babies born each and every day. Why do we not have the same interest in them?

Some precious media folk are crying buckets at the latest theory. That the Duchess of Sussex will give birth at home. Gasp! Oh no! Shock! Horror! How will they get that perfect first photo of the little darling?

There is even talk that the couple will not broadcast the news of the birth until weeks after the event. This would surely give the waiting reporters the rats.

There has been speculation that the home birth is because Meghan is not even pregnant; that fat belly is actually a fake belly, no doubt hired from one of the film industries wardrobes. More than one fake belly would be required. The bellies would have to vary in size. That could cost a fair bit of money, the hire of all those bellies … Come to think of it, she would have access to such things as she was an actress.

There has been talk that there’s a surrogate carrying the royal bundle of joy; that the Duchess of Sussex doesn’t want to ruin her figure. Who’d know if there is any truth to such stuff. Stranger things have happened!

There’s talk about what colour hair the baby might have, and its eyes. It doesn’t really matter, does it?! I hardly think the Monarchy is going to implode if another ‘blood nut’ is born into it.

Perhaps the biggest speculation is on the baby’s gender. But what difference will it make if Prince Harry and Meghan decide to raise their child ‘gender neutral’? That would be interesting.

That brings me to the name. One could not call a genderless baby Diana or Arthur, no, they could not. Possible names could be Leaf, Twig or even Grass. Now they are genderless names.

We will just have to wait and see. By all accounts, the wait mightn’t be much longer. It would be great if, when it’s all over, we can move on from this drama and get on with our lives.