Magic in the Daylight

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If something slightly more elevated and a little less suburban is required, one might consider the white Crown Staffordshire china cockatoos ($128 the pair). One might also consider real cockatoos, but the palace has slapped a firm injunction on live pets.

Rear Admiral Sir Hugh Janion is the man at the palace in charge of the reception and cataloguing of all gifts, from chaps to cockatoos. Each gift must also be checked out thoroughly by a security specialist to see that it is not a surprise package, just as each old Wren-restored inch of St. Paul's (1710) has been gone over daily by bomb-sniffing dogs. Every foot of the two-mile route from Buckingham Palace to the cathedral has been secured by rooftop marksmen from Scotland Yard and closed-circuit television cameras. Still, the royals will remain achingly vulnerable. The horse-drawn coaches that will conduct them to the ceremony at a stately 8 m.p.h. would be pervious to a strong slingshot. Queen Elizabeth has been adamant in her refusal to take any extra protective precautions, even after an unemployed youth fired six blank shots barely 10 ft. from where she rode during the annual trooping of the color in June.

Security has been tight for weeks —British Airways dispatched 40 of its top investigators with lists of "known terrorists" supplied by Interpol to inform local police the world over. Baggage checks at London airports have been especially meticulous. Many of the foreign dignitaries—more than a dozen Presidents, nine members of reigning royal families, three former sovereigns, fifteen Commonwealth heads of state, twelve governors-general—will be arriving with their own security agents, all of whom are required by British law to hand over their guns. This applies also to the U.S. Secret Service, which will be keeping an eye on Mrs. Reagan. Precautions have become so stringent that London's bobbies, who will be spaced every 6 ft. on both sides of the processional route, have been instructed to turn away when the royals pass, and to watch the crowd.

Despite such safeguards, the event aspires to be a spectacle by DeMille, not a thriller by Hitchcock. There are parties everywhere and tours for every bank account. The celebrators at the office windows above the processional route will have paid Heather Pickering of "Corporate Capers" $390 per person for a prime view and a picnic hamper. They also have to clear computerized police security and wear an ID badge. Gate crashing will be prevented and order maintained by members of Pickering's Kung Fu club. Near by at the Strand Palace Hotel, arrangements are even more elaborate. The management has turned a conference room and foyer into an indoor equivalent of an English garden, complete with sky, grass, waterfalls and fishpond.'Guests, each of whom will be billed $500, will arrive to a blast of trumpets. After they put away a hearty breakfast, they will be conducted to a "royal wedding box"—a room overlooking the Strand, specially decorated and provided with a TV set and a uniformed lackey. At. the moment Lady Diana's coach passes, the hotel promises to release a spray of red rose petals and 1,000 doves.