Prince William’s radio interview last Friday continues to make news, and not in a good way. Two of the biggest headlines so far: William had no idea his wife of 15 years speaks conversational Italian (or rather, that Kate knows a few words in Italian); and that William’s eldest son Prince George is already boarding at Lambrook. The boarding issue is especially notable given that William and Princess Kate are constantly using the “school run” as an excuse for why they can’t do anything. Within the same radio interview, William even tried to tell Normal-Bill stories about the chaos of the school run, like he’s even awake at that hour. Well, a columnist for the Independent isn’t buying William’s school-run lies.
Prince William and Kate are often seen doing the morning drop-offs to ensure their children – Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 11, and Prince Louis, eight – have as normal a childhood as possible. But in what can only be described as a full-on Amandaland moment, our future king took to the airwaves, describing on Heart Radio’s breakfast show that his mornings are often total chaos on the way to deliver their kids to the £10,669 a term Lambrook School, near Ascot, with Prince Louis messing the car up with his sticky snacks.
“Yes, there’s a lot of jam sandwiches taken in the car, usually. Louis is very kind. He’ll leave jam fingerprints throughout the car, which is really helpful,” William reported to the nation. “It depends if there is a guitar lesson going on in the morning, a music lesson… you’ve got to get the guitar in the car,” William continued, casually dropping his ability to multitask.
“‘No, we’re not taking the guitar and we need to take the bag for school’. ‘Are we boarding, are we not?’ ‘Are we seeing friends?’ ‘No we’re not’.”
His children also bicker in the car, apparently, with him admitting while giving them a shout-out on air: “Charlotte and Louis, as George was boarding last night… if you’re listening to this, please make sure you are on time,” he said. “Make sure you’re not fighting over who’s listening to what this morning.”
It all sounds like a very bog standard morning in the day in the life of a parent – and I love the fact William is such a hands-on dad, but are we really going to be taken in by this? I think not.
The rest of us are hopping on buses, trains, or driving in clapped-out cars, as in my case, with the wing mirror broken as somebody drove into it last week and I’ve stuck it back on with Sellotape. Most of us don’t have a valet to clean sticky finger marks from our leather seats and I’d posit most family cars are unsalvageable from all the slime and Nutella pancakes, with breadsticks wedged in between the seatbelt sockets so deep, it’s now impossible to remove them.
We also aren’t followed to school by police protection officers or have helicopters at the ready if we’re returning from a half-term break in the countryside and need to make a quick dash to the school gate, or, for that matter, fuss about remembering who’s boarding where that week. Because, guess what, nobody is. While our kids play out on the street, or take a trip to Alton Towers, the Wales’s brood get to hang out on Buckingham Palace’s balcony for a RAF flypast.
We don’t have permanent nannies on top of oodles of other staff at the click of our fingers to organise the mornings like clockwork, should we ever need a break, or are working. Now that would take the pressure off.
The demands of child rearing in a cost of living epidemic, where childcare is out of reach for many average households, is hard – and the minor details of sticky finger marks on a car seat, are the least of our worries.
I personally think that various British columnists are trying to draw attention to the holes in Prince William and Kate’s stories by highlighting less controversial parts. Like, of course anyone with sense knows that Prince Sleep-It-Off cannot even roll out of bed before noon. Of course he’s lying about a chaotic school run which he does not participate in or facilitate. Of course he’s just trying to play-act his nonsensical idea of normal family life. That’s not actually the point! The point is that some or all of their kids are probably already boarding, and William and Kate have been using the “school run” as an excuse to do f–k all for years. That is the real criticism: that there’s no actual excuse for William and Kate’s laziness at this point.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.
