Knight Ridder Newspapers

WINDSOR, England – Around the corner from Windsor Castle, shopkeeper Jules Davies stared at her cell phone in disbelief Monday morning and exclaimed: “I just got a call from my mum in Yorkshire! Prince Charles is postponing his wedding!”

Clearly, this guy cannot catch a break. The divorced and widowed heir to the British throne is finally preparing to wed his life’s love, a middle-age divorcee who used to be known in the tabloids as CHARLES’ OTHER WOMAN. He had the date all picked out, Friday afternoon, April 8, and what could possibly derail him, however briefly, from his dream – except perhaps an unforeseeable and momentous event, such as the funeral of a pope?

Sure enough, his date clashes with the funeral of a pope.

So he and Camilla Parker Bowles will be married Saturday instead; it has to be in the morning, because three other civil ceremonies at the Windsor town hall have been long scheduled for the afternoon, and Charles, who is routinely skewered for monarchial pretensions, could ill afford the public-relations embarrassment of asking those six commoners to make way for him. (One determined bride-to-be, Nadine Hopkins, told British TV on Monday that she was scheduled for 4 p.m., “and we would like to stick to that time.”)

Charles has enough image problems already; last week, posing for press photographers on a ski slope, he was overheard muttering, “Bloody people,” which is the royal version of a Nixonian rant. The wedding has also turned into a public-relations nightmare, because his own mother, the queen, has chosen not to attend; royal flaks say it’s not a snub, just a desire to keep the ceremony low-key.

Actually, for most Britons, this wedding can’t come soon enough. They are weary of all the stories that have been leaking for decades – such as the time, circa 1980, when Charles put his hand down Camilla’s cleavage at a party (she was married; he wasn’t), or the time, in 1989, when he told her on the phone, “I’ll just live inside your trousers,” and likened her breast to the off button on his cellular phone. (She was married; so was he. The call was secretly taped.)

Only a few years ago, most Britons opposed a Charles-Camilla union. But now the polls show that 62 percent buy the idea, even if it means that the fiftysomethings are getting hitched in a registry office that also approves dog licenses, and inspiring the tabloids to run headlines such as BORING OLD GITS TO WED.

Besides, the Brits still reserve the right to indulge one of their favorite national pastimes – being snarky. Camilla continues to be twitted on a daily basis for her body, teeth, hair, jaw, clothes and earthy behavior; Monday, a report circulated that she was recently seen at a formal dinner “cleaning her ears with the (stems) of her spectacles.”

And consider the T-shirt that has been a hot item in Davies’ store: Charles sits atop a horse, and the horse’s face is Camilla.

“Well,” said Davies, frowning at it Monday, “maybe that one is right over the line.” The same might be said for the Camilla party mask. Big mane of gray hair, long jaw – it looks like Jay Leno in drag.

“We actually had it in the window,” Davies said, “but we received some complaints, so we moved it out. Complaints from the locals, actually. It was just a bit of fun for us. We were just messing about.

“Still, our general opinion is, as long as the two of them are happy, let them get on with it. The royal family has brought Camilla in very gradually, which is quite clever. Charles has made his mind up, hasn’t he? And the rest of us, frankly, we have other things in life to be worried about.”

In other words, Britons don’t put great stock in fairy tales anymore; those died for many with Princess Diana. Her marriage was sold to the nation as a fairy tale, but it couldn’t compete with reality.

“It was Diana who used to say that there were three people in her marriage,” said Kashmir Dhillon, another shopkeeper in the shadow of the castle. “But I think everyone should give Camilla a chance. Life is short; everybody has their dark secrets. People like me, the younger generation, we see people in second marriages with stepchildren all the time. They go to one house on Christmas Day, then another house on Boxing Day (Dec. 26). I have one young customer, we were talking about Charles getting married again, and he said to me: “What do I care? My mother has been married four times!”‘

There are no Charles-Camilla banners or bunting in Windsor, just terse signs warning of street closures on wedding day. Yes, there are some Charles-Camilla commemorative pens, aprons, towels, plates, spoons and bookmarks (sharing shelf space with Diana memorabilia), but you have to seek them out in a handful of stores.

Now, however, the wedding date etched on these items is wrong, so the joke in town Monday was that the wares will all wind up on eBay. As folks remarked, it’s the kind of thing that could happen only to Charles.