royal wedding

Recently, my husband and I have been going through the expensive and incredibly labour-intensive process of renewing our UK visas. We are eligible through a complicated "special skills" (or skillz, like the kids say) program that requires us to jump through a series of smaller and smaller hoops. Hoops we could bypass completely if one of our parents or grandparents had been born in England. I'm proud to be Canadian but what I wouldn't give right now for a Liverpudlian grandfather.

At long last, the royal wedding list has been leaked, and the thing people are talking about most is how weird – and unsavoury – some of the guests invited by Prince Charles are.

While most female royal wedding invitees are currently shopping for a new dress, shoes or, perhaps, a giant feather-topped hat, apparently, former model, TV presenter, It girl and current London socialite (yes, that is a job) Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, is desperately looking for a new nose.

The week before Christmas, my husband and I were looking for a gift for a friend’s daughter and we ventured into Hamleys of London on Regent Street. To say the famous toyshop was mayhem on top of chaos, wrapped inside pandemonium would hardly begin to describe it.

In today’s news: the world arbitrarily deems model Candice Swanepoel too thin; Prince Willy will not wear a ring; study says nurses and midwives can safely perform abortions; concern about Japanese seafood; and India’s population is really, really large.