Royal Wedding Leaves Village Merchant Bleary-Eyed but Beaming

Bill Jaynes at 2 p.m. Friday said he had not slept—except for intermittent 15-minute catnaps—“since Tuesday afternoon.”  But he could still smile while manning the cash register at his All Things Bright and British grocery and souvenir shop in The Village.

The British royal wedding—ending with the two kisses around 6 a.m. Friday—had been very, very good to him.

“This last week was like having an extra week of Christmas,” Jaynes said as a trickle of customers continued their browsing of the La Mesa Boulevard store. “It was a shot in the arm that was sorely, sorely needed.”

Jaynes said the store had a few days earlier been emptied into the parking lot for a chance to repaint walls, rearrange shelves and do other needed work.  The original plan was to close between 8 p.m. and midnight Thursday and then reopen at 12:01 a.m. Friday for the show preceding the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey.

Didn’t quite work out that way, Jaynes said.

“I worked straight through from 8 o’clock [Thursday morning], and stayed open all the way through—because people kept coming in to buy things for their parties or coming for ours.”

His shop’s party—with a a wedding arch at the entrance—saw 45 people attending overnight to watch the BBC feed on a large-screen TV set on a shelf.

“People started trickling out of here around 7-7:30 [Friday morning],” he said. “At least two came down from Orange County—didn’t even know La Mesa existed—and were very intrigued by The Village itself.”

The spillover gave some coffee shops some morning business, he figured.

His visitors’ reaction to the wedding itself?

“It was an extremely positive vibe,” he said. “A lot of our longtime customers came, and Anglophiles came here.”

Jaynes said everyone had been looking forward to the wedding because “it’s the last link to Princess Diana, and we get the feeling with the marriage of William and Kate that some of the romance that was promised in the Charles and Diana wedding [of 1981], which never really came to fruition” is finally being realized.

Barbara Nance of Clairemont had seen the store advertised in the Union Jack newspaper, a British tabloid published from La Mesa. So she stopped by to browse.

Her connection to England?  “I used to go to London,” she said. “Saw nine plays in eight days.”

Her companion Marion Marotta of a La Mesa nursing home also was visiting All Things Bright and British for the first time. She said she thought that Middleton “was delightful to look at.”

And North Park residents Richard and Janet Steadham were at the shop preparing for a Friday night party at the House of England in Balboa Park, where the wedding was to be watched on replay.

“We’ll have tea and crumpets, and everybody will be fine and proper—in Levis or whatever,” Richard Steadham said with a smile.

Still grinning—but looking forward to sleep after closing at 10 p.m.—Jaynes said his weeklong open house would continue Saturday with a bagpipe band from Helix Charter High School starting around 10 a.m. and an Elton John tribute band in the afternoon.

“For the Royalists and anyone enthusiastic about the pomp and pageantry,” Jaynes said of the wedding, “it gives hope that the monarchy survives.”

For the receipts of the week, Jaynes said he won’t tally them “until my eyes straighten out.”