Dear William and Kate,

First and foremost I write to congratulate you on your forthcoming marriage and wish you well for what I’m sure will be a marvellous occasion. Many thanks also for your splendid invitation. I finally received the much anticipated envelope yesterday, amidst a great deal of excitement, but was immediately saddened to discover that the big day is to be so soon! Possibly there have been some delays in the Royal mail reaching the Skukuza Post Office. This is a shambolic affair because it simply does not leave us enough time to shuffle our dates around and organise a visit abroad.

Tom Imrie's Wedding Invite

I therefore regrettably inform you that we shan’t be able to attend the ceremony at Westminster or the small gathering for a few hundred afterwards – as you can imagine it’s co-incidentally just after Easter here as well and owing to a full Londolozi and the advent of our annual Winter Calendar – well, we just can’t leave anything to chance.

Speaking about Winter, I was just thinking how key the weather is to these grand occasions. When we had to pull off a big wedding last year with a quaint ceremony down by the Mxabene, it was all oysters and sunshine – but then again – that’s sunny South Africa for you. I do hope it doesn’t rain and that the weather is set fair for all those that will turn out for the procession.
A word of advice for the carriage ride: if there is a bit of drizzle about and the cobbles are a bit slippery then use a LandRover to get from Westminster to Buckingham palace. There is a temptation these days to go with a Toyota for navigating tricky spots but in our experience they are just not comfortable or dignified enough. Anyway, of course it’s not going to rain!

I must say that I’m slightly put out that you would choose Tanzania as a honeymoon destination ahead of Londolozi. I have to wonder if the Windsors are still holding a grudge after all that nonsense of our famous tracker Winnis calling Princess Alices’ husband a ‘bloody fool’ back in ‘33? Alarmingly, I also overheard that those close to the future ‘Lion of England’ are slightly concerned about the danger presented by Male Lions to your Royal personage here in the Sabi Sands. If that is the case I would like to put your mind at ease on a few points regarding Male Lions in the region…

Firstly, whilst it is certainly true that the Mapogo are still a fearsome coalition there are now only 3 of them and they are apparently ‘only just’ dominant in the Western sector of the Reserve. I really believe it to be extremely unlikely that we would encounter these lions during your stay. On the nights when the choir aren’t singing in camp or Dean isn’t serenading on the saxophone it is always a possibility that one might hear them but to be honest I think you can write the Mapogo off. A far more likely occurrence would be us finding one or all 4 of the new male lions that have come to Londolozi. They are called the Majingilane and when they arrived here last year the first thing they did was to actually eat one of the Mapogo.

Majingilane Male Lion

I’m not telling you this to frighten you or anything but rather to illustrate that lions are only interested in lions and that your succession is not the kind that they would try and prevent. Besides which, if your aides sensibly steered you towards a post nuptial stay in the new Pioneer camp, I could probably arrange a private landrover for yourself and Kate. This would mean that we could make a decision to avoid seeing lions altogether without impeding on another guests wishes and we could concentrate on benign things like Black Mambas and White Rhinoceroses.
This might seem like a piece of re-assuring rhetoric but aside from this we do actually have a plan in place for these rare but wonderful royal occasions.

Firstly – spiriting you both into Londolozi undetected would be no problem whatsoever. You probably don’t want much to do with helicopters on your time off and with all eyes scanning The Sands for unwanted helicopter activity in case there are poachers about, we would probably fly you in directly from LHR to LDZ onboard a fixed wing. Dave Varty has a recently renewed pilots licence so that obviates the need for background security checks on Fed Air or Bat Air pilots to boot.
Secondly, to avoid a tip off to the News of the World from our staff, we would have Trisha run the camp during your stay. Being the only American on our staff, she doesn’t put much stock in Regal affairs, and to be frank, probably doesn’t even know who you are.
Lastly we thought about putting you in the new electric landrover. This would not only shuttle the two of you around the bush in total silence, it would also ensure (unnnecessarily) that our 4 Majingilane Royals would be completely unaware of your presence. As a final thought it would vindicate our General Manager’s tireless efforts to demonstrate that this technology can actually work and cheer him up immensely for the first time since the last one burnt to the ground on Walpurgis night last year…

The last thing we want to do is put any pressure on you on the run up to the big day, but we all urge you to go with your heart in these matters and give us a try for the honeymoon.

Either way we wish you both the very best of luck, not just for the ceremony but the beautiful years of marriage ahead of you both. You can be sure that those not on gamedrive will certainly be watching every moment on the big TV at the recently renovated and re-opened Spaza Café.

Yours Truly,

Tom Imrie