0500h

The Queen’s Own Royal Bed Chamber Door Knocker knocks on one’s door and coughs the discreet Queen’s-Own-Royal-Bed-Chamber-Door-Knocker-wake-up-cough. One is already awake, but one pulls the bell rope labelled SNOOZE anyway because one can. Below stairs, the First Royal Bell Watcher Cognisant notes the signal and sets to work on a beautifully calligraphed scroll, which he duly passes to one of the twelve Royal Footmen Attendant.

The chosen Royal Footman Attendant (now officially the Royal Footman, Interim Bearer Presumptive of the Royal Snooze Command Scroll) bears the Royal Snooze Command Scroll on a sterling silver platter along the corridors of the Lower Ground floor until he reaches the office of the Prince’s Own Royal Scroll Bearer.

The elaborate ceremony of The Passing of The Royal Snooze Command is then enacted: the Prince’s Own Royal Scroll Bearer swears faithfully to bear the Royal Snooze Command Scroll in the name of Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, The Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Soloman Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis; Duke of Normandy; Lord of Man; Duke of Lancaster; Defender of the Faith; Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Royal Seal is then affixed to the Royal Snooze Command Scroll and it is borne aloft on the diamond-encrusted gold Bowes-Lyon Scroll Salver to the office of the Royal Annunciator of the Scrolls

The Royal Annunciator of the Scrolls accepts the Royal Snooze Command Scroll with the traditional words “I accept this Royal Scroll and promise faithfully to annunciate it even unto the last syllable, heedless of circumstance, war, plague, or death, which shall have no dominion over me, so help me God.”

The Royal Annunciator of the Scrolls studies the Royal Snooze Command Scroll carefully and then makes his sedate way along the corridors and up the stairs of the Royal Palace to the Royal Bed Chamber. He is all set to annunciate the Royal Snooze Command when something ginger and springy bounces past him and forces open one’s door.

“Yo, bro! Wassup! You is gettin’ married today, innit!”

Prince Harry, for it is he, bounces up and down on one’s bed until one is forced to sit up.

“For fuck sake, Harry,” one says, “give it a rest will you! One knows one is getting married today. One can hardly forget when one is awoken for the three hundred and sixty-fifth day in a row by one’s idiot brother.”

But it is too late. Harry has already bounced out of the room in search of entertainment elsewhere.

“Fuckwit!” one mutters under one’s breath.

And so one’s great day begins.