Katy Guest: Rant & Rave (03/04/11)

Rant

Please will somebody stop Michael Gove talking about children's literacy before I am forced to shove a soggy copy of Gormenghast in his mouth?

Not content with criticising children for reading fewer than 50 books a year, he is now having a go at what they read. Children will grow up without a love of reading, he says, because they don't read enough classic (pre-1900) literature at school. Michael, for the last time: children will grow up without a love of reading because your government is closing down all the sodding libraries. Now go away and copy out War and Peace until you have something sensible to say.

Rave

It's always nice when people do exactly the opposite of what all the tacky famous people are doing. So hats off (and leave them off) to the Great British Public for refusing to swallow all this wedding propaganda. They're all doing it in celebrity land. Wills 'n' Kate, the royals, are doing it. Ed 'n' Justine, the politicos, are doing it. Adam 'n' Jane, the BT Broadband couple, are doing it after six years of their on-off TV love affair. Even Katie Price is doing it again. (This last was not true at the time of going to press, but probably will be by the time you read this.)

But figures just released by the Office of National Statistics show that fewer people are marrying now than at any time since the reign of Queen Victoria. (What about Queen Victoria's marriage could have put them off, I wonder?) The average age of women getting married has also bust 30 for the first time – seven or eight years older than our mothers were when they got married.

This is a credit to the common sense of the public, because since we're all apparently going to live till we're 120 now, we'd better make sure that we find the right person before committing the next 90 years of our lives to him.

Congratulations to Prince William for holding out (according to his brother) until he turned 28. Champagne all round for those who can wait even longer.