Marry, Marry, Quite Contrary

To this day, Amanda is still haunted by the story of how some random Australian girl went out one Friday night with her girlfriends to some random Australian bar, got chatted up by some random cute European dude who turned out to be the Crown Prince of Denmark, fell in love, got married and became the Crown Princess of Denmark.

            “I mean, that’s really random, right?” she said recently, as she parked herself by the side of a bar in Clarke Quay in the vain hope that she could recreate the right conditions for a random run-in with an eligible European crown prince.

            Saffy looked around the crowded room at Chupitos, her bosom twitching uncertainly. “No offence to this fine establishment,” she said eventually, “but I seriously doubt we’re going to find any royalty here.”

            “Got, lah!” Sharyn drawled, pushing her thick spectacles back up her nose. “There, over there, got some queens!”

            Saffy shrieked and collapsed into Sharyn’s arms. It took a while for their mad cackling to stop.

            “Oh my God, Shazz, you kill me! Really!” Saffy said, dabbing her eyes. “That’s the funniest thing you’ve said all year!”

Amanda sighed. “How do these things happen? And why are they happening to other people?”

“I don’t know why you’re so hung up about marrying royalty,” Saffy said, propping herself back up against the bar. “What’s the big deal? I mean, in-laws are bad enough, but royal in-laws? Have we learnt nothing from Princess Diana?”

“Speaking of,” Amanda began. I rolled my eyes and made a mental note to stay home on Friday nights from now on. “Can we talk? What is the deal with Meghan Markle?”

“Oh, must we?” Saffy groaned. “You’ve been on the same subject for weeks!”

For years, while everyone was gushing over how cute Prince William was, it was always Prince Harry that Amanda had her eye on. “Oh, I have this thing for gingers!” she would tell anyone who would listen. “And this guy is totally hot!”

Every couple of weeks, she’d sit in her chair at the hairdressers, flip through the latest issue of Women’s Weekly and comment on William’s receding hairline.

“He’s still cute, lah!” Sonny, her colorist would say.

“If you say so, but, seriously, can we please take a look at Harry?” Amanda would point a perfectly manicured finger at a picture of Harry doing something ridiculously attractive, like hugging a random African child, hanging out with some famous Olympic gold medallist, or coming out of some random church where a distant cousin had just gotten married. “He is so much hotter. And he’s still got all his hair!”

A few months ago, when she attended a St. Regis charity event where Prince Harry was the guest-of-honour, she was practically hyperventilating and had to sit down quietly in a corner for a while to recover. “Gorgeous!” was all she could say for days afterwards.

So, when news broke that the Object of Her Affection had gotten engaged to Meghan Markle, it was greeted with the same kind of shock that had accompanied the Brangelina Break Up.

“How did that happen?” she wailed.

Saffy, who’s never understood the fuss about the Windsor boys, was unsympathetic. “Well, for starters, she’s gorgeous! She always looks fabulous in ‘Suits’, and I would kill for that figure, I really would! If I was Harry, I’d marry her, too!”

Amanda sighed. “What I want to know is how these women keep meeting these princes? What, is there some secret place where eligible royal men hang out that I don’t know about?”

It doesn’t help that Sharyn, too, has fallen under the spell of the future Princess Meghan. “Wah, she so swee, hor? Such nice skin. So sexy her figure, and her teeth so nice and white, some more!”

“She’s drop dead gorgeous!” Saffy said, rubbing salt in the wound.

Amanda sniffed in a way that left no doubt in anyone’s mind that the world would be a much better place if Prince Harry had proposed to her instead of the interloper, Meghan Markle.

“Oh, your prince will come one day, Amanda,” Saffy said, rubbing her best friend’s back.

Amanda pursed her lips with deep dissatisfaction. “Not to sound like a Charlotte, but I’ve been dating since I was 19! I’m exhausted! Where is he?!”

“He’s getting ready to head out to a pub! I promise!” Saffy said in soothing tones.

Sharyn later said if that sort of thing can really happen, she’d have been Mrs Lee Hsien Loong by now. “Wah, he so han-sum, cannot tahan, I tell you!”