Not many hours ago, I was pacing up and down, if only virtually, waiting for the birth.   Along with many others, I wasn't really able to concentrate on anything much, having been told that the process had started and when the news finally broke, I confess a tear almost squeezed its way down my rugged cheek.

I wasn't interviewed by Sky News or asked my views about the name, although the baby's parents know I've suggested a second name, one which will go down so well with the child's ancestors that I was told by the proud dad in no uncertain terms that I'd have to tell them myself.   Given that said ancestors inspire the appropriate awe in me, I probably won't: these important families tend to give short shrift to those who dare tease them.

I still think George and its derivatives, adequately feminised, make a perfectly acceptable moniker, though.

Having a glass or two of the liquid that cheers with the proud, if still slightly shell-shocked, pop, memories trickled back of one my own brat's first acts, namely dousing one of the attending physicians with a small, but potent, stream, a fitting gesture of retaliation for the indignities visited on students of my faculty by those in the MD course.

You'll have gathered, I assume, by the reference to the baby's sex, that it's not the Third in Line to the Serene Throne of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of whom I muse, this hot and muggy summer's day.   There have been other births recently, and the one I'm on about was closer to our hearts and more immediately concerning, though happily all is now on track.

The birth that took place in London, on the other hand, was perfectly timed.  There are limits to the number of times the appearance of the sun can make headlines, even in the UK, so the son's appearance gave the tabloids, both print and electronic (Sky is pretty much the Daily Mirror with moving pictures, really) something to match the back-pages' effusiveness about England whipping the Ozzies in the Ashes.

Young Cambridge's popping gave us a day or so of nut-cases being interviewed, obsessives being taken advantage of and general distraction from the humdrum and the quotidian, which seems to be something the Brits do so well. 

It also gave us a good dose of cynicism and snooty wise-cracks, even of the home-grown variety, with valiant guardians of our national identity wondering aloud whether we've ever grown out of being a colony, such was the interest being shown in the dropping of the Royal Sprog.  The mild irony was that the self-righteous utterly failed to notice that all that they were highlighting was their own insularity and insecurity, since the media hype greeting the new Royal was widespread and certainly not limited to ex-colonies.

In fact, if anything, the coverage was pretty muted here, though to a greater or lesser extent the efforts of assorted Ministers to have themselves nominated for fiction writing after the publication of their Roll of Assets were blown off the front page.