Yes yes I know, it's been a while since the last getREAL issue. It's not that I haven't been writing, it's mostly that we're in central Australia, and there's just nowhere to upload the site. I've been lucky to be able to read some email on one of those internet booth things.

Roll on high-speed and cheap satellite communications.

We haven't been entirely out of touch though, we did watch some of the royal wedding between Tasmanian girl made good, Mary Donaldson, and her Danish prince.

On the surface this looks like a real fairly tale, and of course in many ways it is, but what a life she's signed up for. From now on her time is not her own, she'll be expected to be patron of this, sponsor of that, and benefactor to something else. She'll have to say the right things, to the right people, at the right functions, about subjects she probably has no interest in. In general she'll have to be "Royal" and perfect all the time, for the next 70 years.

Yuk!

Now I'd love the kind of money and resources she'll have access to, but not at that price.

Living on the road is not all beer and skittles, but nobody ever tells us what to do (well maybe the occasional ranger), we can walk along any beach we like without bodyguards, we can wear old tracksuit pants without being slammed in Who Weekly, and we can sleep in without missing a function and snubbing the Royal Society for the Preservation of Royal Societies.

Ours is a lifestyle that's about as free as they get in western society, and we aren't swapping it for anything.

Good luck Mary, send me an email and let me know how it's going. Of course I may be out of range, but I'll get back to you eventually.

Till next time then, and remember,

don't dream it, be it!