Grace Dent: How to survive the Jubilee weekend

Face it, there’s going to be a whole lotta ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Send her victorious’ over this long, bunting-filled weekend. If you can’t be ‘Happy and glorious’ about it, it’s going to be a slog. So, republicans, gird your loins to endure the full-throated adoration of Her Majesty, her work ethic, her wisdom and her indefatigability. Load a paper plate with Victoria sponge and Coronation chicken, pour a ginormous Pimm’s, sit back and enjoy. This is going to be fun by royal appointment. Shouting ‘Bunch of bleedin’ parasites’ every time the Duchess of Cambridge appears looking fragrant and slinky, or Prince Andrew staggers by beneath a pile of medals, won’t be good for your blood pressure or anyone else’s. So get involved. Alternatively, join Twitter where a healthy, rumbling counter-commentary to all the fulsome praise is sure to be in full swing.

Recognising Your Royals

If you’re a monarchy newbie, swot up on royal names and faces to glean maximum enjoyment from the weekend’s ogling. The Party at the Palace, The Carriage Procession and The River Pageant are going to be chock-full of The Family. Do you know your Princess Eugenie from your Zara Phillips? Your Earl of Wessex from your Lord Frederick Windsor? Without this knowledge, Jubilee TV will be like starting to watch the second series of Made In Chelsea at episode seven. Girls and gays: don’t be surprised if you come out of this weekend slightly in lust with Prince Harry. Red alert: Pippa Middleton and her lovely bottom — which resembles two Fortnum & Mason peaches in a muslin hankie — will be attending the Diamond Jubilee pageant.

The Big Lunch

Sunday 3 June is the day of The Big Lunch, so look out for local Jubilee street parties. I know. The notion of a big ‘let’s all get together’ knees-up where one’s forced to make small talk with strangers one has lived 50 metres away from for five years but never talked to sounds like oodles of fun. Have some nifty conversation openers up your sleeve such as ‘Gosh, aren’t the recycling rounds temperamental? They wouldn’t take my jam-jar lids either!’ and ‘Is your child supposed to eat all those E numbers? His mouth appears to be fizzing’ or ‘Are you the ones with the noise abatement order or the ones with the cult?’ and ‘What? These are peaches in the Coronation chicken? What fresh hell is this?’ Remember this is The Big Lunch not The Big Punch-Up, so keep your strong ideas on politics, religion and the congestion charge to yourself. Suggested recipes on The Big Lunch website include ‘Mrs Taylor’s Cheesy Owls’ (does not contain actual owls), and ‘Whole Wheat Salad’, which sounds a bit knit-your-own yoghurt, so perhaps have a burger before you leave the house.

The After-Party

Ladies: revellers may look increasingly like Prince Harry and less like Harry Redknapp after one has consumed a litre of Pimm’s and some roughly made gin-based cocktails with names such as ‘Sex in Balmoral’ and ‘A Mouthful of Crown Jewels’. FYI: Jubilee fever will not protect against pregnancy. Neither will doing it standing up wrapped in bunting made from toilet-roll inner tubes and BacoFoil. Any man pretending to be a distant relation of our Royal Family, but who is celebrating the Jubilee in The Springfield Park Tavern, Bounds Green, is probably a fantasist. Men: royal fever does not permit you to take a mistress, or mistresses, or have your current boring old wife beheaded, even if it is a time of leading by royal example.

The Big Royal Rock-Out

Staged next to the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, the BBC and Gary ‘give me a knighthood’ Barlow have brought together ‘leading talent’ from the world of music. Britain expects. If someone isn’t stood on the palace roof ripping through ‘Rule Britannia’ on a Fender Stratocaster while Philip sits indoors with cotton wool in his ears, then on some level Barlow will have failed. The concert will include classic hits by artists including Shirley Bassey, Jools ‘boogie-woogie’ Holland, Jessie ‘thrush-inducing manmade-fibre catsuit’ J, Paul ‘inexplicably beetroot hair’ McCartney, Cliff ‘Wired for Sound’ Richard and soon to be Google-search favourite Alfie Boe. No, I’ve never heard of him either. Other names will be announced in due course. Sadly, the Russian feminist punk collective Pussy Riot has been deemed ‘unsuitable’.

The Merry Throng

The best view of the Jubilee celebrations will be from one’s sofa, watching BBC One and flicking your red button. Warning: Central London will be very hectic, awash with tourists, part-timer revellers (hammered on one sniff of the barmaid’s Jubilee tea towel), over-excited Kiwis leading conga lines down the Mall and Italians in Union Jack jester hats taking pictures of each other pretending to push over Big Ben. Real Londoners will stay indoors with delicious, heart-clogging M&S limited-edition Jubilee pork pies. If you’re determined to watch Tuesday’s Carriage Procession up close, leave at the crack of dawn, pack a Shewee and a camping chair, and be prepared for a ruck with a Princess Di obsessive who’s been living in a tent on Whitehall for nine days, just him and his Barbie Princess Styling Head whose hair he’s cut and dyed into a 1980s Spencer Sloane ‘do’.

Happy and Glorious

Things that will never get boring during the weekend: royal concepts of fashion (pay attention to Princess Beatrice in case there is a repeat of her amazing royal wedding space pretzel); corgis — not quite a dog, not quite a llama, always funny; Prince Philip trying to behave himself and not say anything deemed churlish or offensive to anyone for THE WHOLE FOUR DAYS; asking loudly where Fergie is (answer: at home, wearing a Slanket, persona non grata); endless rolling live TV link-ups in which drunken members of the public are allowed to ‘share tales’; wondering why day-on-day your pants feel tighter and whether it has anything to do with the family-size Battenberg and bottle of London gin you’ve been chipping away at since Friday evening; singing the national anthem and adding your own verses and salutes; waking up every morning and realising it’s yet another day off. God Save the Queen! ES