“Life is about storytelling...All of those things I was hoping for have happened”, said Meghan at the operatic Oprah Interview

Meghan :  “Life is about storytelling”

Meghan : “ I think that all of those things I was hoping for have happened”

For context, both statements are from the Transcript of the Meghan Interview 

Then there’s this worthy statement, part of a longer one issued by Buckingham Palace about some of the various allegations made in that interview. Buckingham Palace says:

“...some recollections may vary…”

My own take on all this, with deep sympathy for all concerned, is as follows, and I’m writing this after watching the Oprah Interview this evening on the heels of having watched three episodes of Steve McQueen's masterly “Small Axe” about racism in what from bottom to top, so one of the characters says, is a class society, something I was completely unaware of in the mid fifties of the last century, attending primary school in Fulham, having to change buses twice journeying all the way from 144 Sinclair Road where we lived, to get to school come rain, sunshine or snow – and snowballs and just thinking of all that just now, mind travels with absolute accuracy to Charlotte, my Aunty Nelly’s daughter - Aunt Nelly was Dutch and my guardian in London – Charlotte and I went to school together. Her father, my Uncle John Jeffrey-Coker was/ is Nigerian and it’s possible that Charlotte took her name and some inspiration from Charlotte, the queen consort of the British King George III, sometimes gladly rumoured to have been “The First Black Queen of Britain “

Today, taking into consideration the fact that we were the only non-white students at our school, in retrospect the only racism that I can have cause to recollect – also considering that that period in British history 1952-1956 – coincided with what we now know as “ The Windrush Generation”, the only remotely “ racist” incidents were quite good fun - Charlotte Coker was teased as “Charlotte Cocoa”, I beat up one of her classmates who was harassing her and got called a “ hooligan “ for that and in the wintertime, after school we had to negotiate (Charlotte and I had to decide jointly) which of the various exits we were going to take when school was over, because “they” would be waiting for us with snowballs. It was all clean fun, a variation of “Cowboys and Indians“ and other forms of sword-fighting. My best friend was Jimmy Mannix. And, maybe not "racist" at all, "they" once "borrowed" me to play the part of one of the three wise men in a nativity play at a nearby church. The only time I ever set foot in a church, in those days...

At the interview, with all of her twenty-first century awareness intact we are to imagine that when Meghan mentions being “a person of colour” - as an American, she knows all that “a person of colour” implies whether at Beverly Hills, the White House or the American Palace, just as that song goes, “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.”

As a royalist at heart, I love Her Majesty and really mean it when I sing, God Save the Queen!

I really like Harry. I suppose everybody does and he comes on as ( to use a Swedish word which is closer to what I mean, in that Oprah Interview Harry strikes me – strongly as being “sympatisk”. He would make a good British Ambassador to anywhere in the Commonwealth - especially now that Britain has Brexited and needs former colonies and friends perhaps even more than she needs Empire. So, rightly, Buckingham Place has to do damage control and hopefully persuade Meghan & Harry to wash the dirty linen at home over there in California. And please, no further leakages.

BTW, I thought that Harry could have taken the bull by the horns from the very beginning and still wonder how things would have turned out if he had fallen in love head over heels with a real black and beautiful Kwa-Zulu princess...

But’ its exactly as some say : Love is blindness

“Well, I don't know, but I've been told

The streets in heaven are lined with gold

I ask you how things could get much worse

If the Russians happen to get up there first.

Wowee! Pretty scary!

Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree

I want everybody to be free

But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater

Move in next door and marry my daughter

You must think I'm crazy!

I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba!”

( That was Dylan: I shall be Free No. 10

So far, in full public view Meghan has comported herself with dignity – as Prince Harry’s wife, as Duchess of Sussex, as Mother of Archie…

Perhaps, she didn’t need to go cry on Oprah’s shoulder, but to know that for sure, you'd have to be in her shoes...