BRITAIN: As courtiers tried to maintain a semblance of dignity in preparing for the wedding of Prince Charles and his long-term companion, Camilla Parker Bowles, the circus was getting into full swing yesterday with revelations that police at Windsor Castle had failed to find a fake bomb.
The future of some senior police officers was said to be in question after an undercover reporter and photographer drove a van through the gates of the castle, focal point of the wedding festivities, carrying a box in the back marked "bomb".
The prank, orchestrated by the Sun newspaper, was the most recent breach of security at the castle and the latest gaffe to befall the impending royal nuptials, which have been plagued by mishaps since the prince's marriage plans were announced in mid-February.
Indeed, the second wedding of the prince appeared to be descending into a sad farce after what was obviously poor counsel from his advisers that saw plans chop and change right up to this week, when the death of Pope John Paul II forced a postponement from the original date of the wedding on Friday.
"Can anything more go wrong?" asked London's Evening Standard newspaper, noting that some might see this latest mishap as "another sign that fate looks on tomorrow's union unkindly". However it added that the prince and his bride-to-be "should take comfort from the old adage that a couple who confront serious misfortune before their wedding may look forward to long years of happiness afterwards".
Souvenir hunters are frantically buying up tea towels, coffee mugs and other royal memorabilia stamped "April 8" in the hope that they will become valuable collectables when paired with items bearing the correct date of April 9th.
Public indifference to the wedding appears to be giving way to a modicum of excitement, as speculation about Mrs Parker Bowles's choice of outfit, hair, make-up and jewellery grows daily, amid a grudging acceptance that she and Prince Charles are genuinely in love and deserve to be afforded a contented future together.
Recent asides by the prince during a press photocall while holidaying in Switzerland, when he referred to journalists as "bloody people," have won him plaudits in the letters pages.
Historian Graham Stewart said his marriage to the apparently down-to-earth Mrs Parker Bowles could in time be compared favourably as a triumph of substance over the frippery of his first marriage to Princess Diana.
The security scare rattled the royal protection squad as preparations for the wedding moved into their final phase.
The prince's household, Clarence House, released details of the day's events, which will be broadcast live on television and have themselves forced the annual Grand National steeplechase to be put back until later in the afternoon.
Prince Charles and Mrs Parker Bowles will be married in a short civil ceremony in the Ascot Room of Windsor Guildhall, a few hundred metres down Castle Hill from the George IV gateway of Windsor Castle.
They will make the trip in a 1962 Rolls-Royce Phantom which belonged to the late queen mother.
There they will exchange vows, which will make no mention of God, and present each other with identical rings made from a chunk of gold from a Welsh mine by one of the prince's favoured jewellers, Wartsky.
The couple, who will then be referred to as their royal highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall, will return to the castle and rest, while the queen - who will not attend the civil ceremony - hosts a luncheon for some of the royal relations.
At 2.30pm some 800 invited guests will gather at St George's chapel inside Windsor Castle to witness the religious blessing of the couple's union, conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
The guest list includes members of the royal family, a sprinkling of European crowned heads and some pretenders, politicians from home and abroad, musicians and pop stars, fashion designers and philanthropists.
Perhaps most remarkably, two dabbawallahs from Bombay (Mumbai) have been invited to represent the 5,000 men who each day deliver 175,000 lunch boxes to the schools and offices of India's commercial heart and so impressed Prince Charles when he visited two years ago.
Raghunath Medge, president of the Bombay Tiffin Box Supply Charity Trust which represents the dabbawallahs, and dabbawallah Sopan Mare were thrilled about their expenses-paid invitation to the wedding and said they would buy suits especially for the occasion.
After the religious service, the queen will host a buffet in her state apartments, before the newlyweds leave for a short honeymoon in Aberdeen.