On Friday morning, much of Britain woke up to burst water pipes, power cuts and snow from Storm Goretti.
Old ladies felt too afraid to venture out because of the ice – but also too scared to pay the price of turning the central heating dial past 17C.
Farmers struggled to feed livestock and revive shivering lambs.
Over-stretched A&E departments juggled victims of flu and broken limbs.
In the midst of this cold weather gloom, it was therefore surprising to see the latest video from the Princess of Wales.
It is of course wonderful to see Kate looking so radiant, healthy and strong after the terrible cancer diagnosis that shook the whole nation.
When she released her first video in summer announcing she was on the mend, I wrote about how moving I found it – and that it brought me to tears.
Yet watching her latest video, I felt once again a little twitch of worry about the direction the slick Palace PR team seem to be directing her.
As I wrote about the first video she released, cancer is messy, imperfect and shattering. But the most recent of these strange films seems to be a misfire from a family once so protective of their privacy. It smacks of something Meghan and Harry might come up with.
The feature showed our future Queen all nicely swaddled in Holland Cooper tweed and Le Chameau furry-lined wellies. She wafted in a winter wonderland, leant on a picturesque ancient bridge and dangled her elegant fingers in a bubbling brook.
Kate took the opportunity to mark her 44th birthday today by releasing the video, posted on Instagram, to close her series of more emotional – some sycophants would say modern, but I would say unwise – social media offerings made following her cancer diagnosis and recovery.
This latest instalment of her time out with Mother Nature, entitled Winter – not very imaginatively, shows her walking through the Berkshire countryside at dawn. The clip is accompanied by her reflective voice-over and a soundtrack of plinky plonky music.
In her narration, she speaks about stillness, gratitude and the ‘restorative’ power of the natural world.
‘Nature has helped me heal,’ she tells us from beneath a bakerboy cap. Winter brings us solace, patience, a stream flowing ‘just enough for us to see our own reflection’.
Fears are washed away (‘Not Diana’s engagement ring!’ I found myself shouting at the post that showed it glinting perilously on her finger), and Kate finds herself reflecting on ‘how deeply grateful’ she is.
I am so sorry to say this on her birthday but who on earth told Kate releasing this video, today of all days when so many people are struggling, was a good idea?
It’s not just unfortunate timing, its tone shows she – and by extension the Prince of Wales – has come unstuck.
No matter how many hospital wards or Scout troops she might visit, she is missing the mark on how to truly empathise with the British public.
And given the deep affection and respect we hold Kate in, that’s such a pity.
This three-minute nature-fest shows Kate is as out of touch as if she’d released a film of herself sitting on a throne wearing a crown, or waving from a private jet as she heads off to the Caribbean or on another skiing jaunt.
This is not how winter, especially in the countryside, is for the vast majority. The reality is shivering at a bus stop in a thin coat (rural poverty is the hardest of all) or scraping thick ice off the windscreen. Or shovelling snow so you can get the car out, feed the animals or even just get down the path.
Where’s the mud, the chaos, the road crashes (I saw two this morning up here in the Dales)? Now that would have been a better video: Kate helping locals to clear snow outside a school or church. Delivering boxes of groceries. Chatting to people waiting to see a doctor.
She is delivering an idealised 1930s vision of rural life that no longer exists, or perhaps only survives inside the royal parks and estates. Her diction, too, is reminiscent of the late Queen’s early Christmas messages to the nation – as clipped as one of Charles’s yew hedges.
Far worse, though, is her whole ‘Nature is our quiet teacher’ schtick, that it ‘helps us to heal’. I am afraid this misguided way of thinking reminds me of The Salt Path scandal, in which a seriously ill man claims a several-hundred-mile hike and bracing sea air cured him.
I imagine those with no money and chronic ill health who can’t spare a second from their demanding lives to stop and appreciate a tree or a bird will be left feeling a little inadequate having watched this.
Amongst the glowing red hearts now multiplying beneath Kate’s birthday message on Instagram, there are a few dissenters.
Writes one: ‘Well, if I wasn’t poor things would be a lot different.’
Another writes: ‘I like Kate but these videos are getting weird now. We get it — you survived cancer, but why not include a message encouraging people to donate to cancer charities so as to help others?’
The most telling comment I saw? ‘She might not have had the same outcome if like most of us with cancer she had to run the gauntlet of the often-incompetent NHS.’
Kate is supposed to be on our side. To show she’s human, she understands. We’re grown-ups and we can take a dose of reality.
For me, her latest video is even worse than the infamous 1969 fly-on-the wall documentary of the Royal Family at home because at least that showed them bickering and barbequing.
Sorry Kate, I adore you – but this feels far away anyone who’s really struggling.
