#MeghanMarkle

Let me start with a confession:  I'm a strange candidate for membership of The Meghan Markle Fan Club ...and yet, I feel compelled to join.

Why am I so passionate about this issue?   It's a question that I've asked myself more than once. As the sort of guy who'd rather be climbing mountains with an ice-axe, or hacking-through jungles with a machete,  I ought not to care.  And yet I do.  Why?

It's something to do with bullying,  but far more to do with those patronizing, self-adoring  men, that make my flesh creep and my skin crawl.

By some quirk of astronomy, all these men have now lined-up in perfect-harmony: on the other-side of the argument, and on the wrong side of history. Let us name names: Clarkson, Piers Morgan, and a whole bunch of other pot-bellied pundits who think that, from their armchairs in London, they can understand the inner workings of a woman, on the other side of the world. What magnificent ESP they all must have !

I thought that these dinosaurs had died-out in the 70's - but like some genetic throwback, still they persist.

Commenting on the 60's, Jonathan Meades  once said of The Beatles, and of their infuriated detractors: 'They existed in different eras, but at the same time', and perhaps this tells us something about Meghan, and about those to seek to crush-her in the current epoch?  Perhaps, like those who decried The Beatles as a passing fad, we are witnessing the end of an old era, and the beginning of a new culture.

Perhaps the conflict, between supporters of Meghan and detractors like Clarkson, that we all take as permanent, is nothing of the sort? Perhaps it's a temporary aberration, akin to spying two ships, headed in different directions, on the same small stretch of sea ...but where one will soon be sail over the horizon, never to return again.

Perhaps.

And this equivocation is perhaps of itself  the reason why I've come to feel so strongly about the matter. It's because I could be wrong, and because this transition from old-guard  to bright-young-things  may not be fated. If the future is not yet written, and if there's a chance that the old-soaks might not  sail-off into the sunset, then surely we're obliged to act, speak and write  in a way that secures this outcome?

I may not look like a typical  Meghan supporter, but this doesn't mean that I don't feel like one. I admire her greatly, and I'm invested in her winning.

I have too much skin in the game  with this one, to let it pass-by ...so I will be supporting her, and all that she does. Cut-adrift from the rusting-hulk of the Royal Family, her detractors thought she'd be lost at sea, but they underestimated her. She is now the master of her own ship; navigating the course to a bright and vibrant future.

She has decried wealth and privilege, and richly  deserves our admiration. From a start-point of lowly-beginnings, she now deserves to be held high: as a role model, for those who give voice to the truth, and for those who refuse to silenced.

I wish her godspeed, and success upon success.

- Pal Blanko