By my records, the Duchess of Cambridge has not done anything for one of her (very few) patronages in almost two years exactly. That patronage? The Scout Association. Her official patronage page says she’s a “volunteer” with The Scout Association, but she hasn’t “volunteered” to do anything for or with them since 2014. She used to average one or two appearances a year in the first few years of her marriage. But not lately! Thankfully, The Scout Association is celebrating their centenary anniversary this month, and Kate has deigned to RSVP to a big celebration which will be held next week, on December 14th.
Kate Middleton will attend a special pack meeting next week, where she will play games and join a baking class and first aid training. The meeting, at North Wooton scout hut next Wednesday, is part of the Cubs’ centenary celebrations.
Kensington Palace said: “The Duchess of Cambridge will attend a special Cub Scout Pack meeting with Cubs from the Kings Lynn District to celebrate 100 years of Cubs. Her Royal Highness will join the Pack as they take part in games and activities themed around looking after yourself and others physically and emotionally. Activities will include a parachute game to encourage teamwork and cooperation, first aid training and cub cake icing. They will then join together to renew their Cub Scout promise and celebrate the Cubs’ 100th anniversary with the lighting of 100 candles and a rendition of happy birthday.”
Cub scouting was co-founded by Robert BadenPowell and Vera Barclay on December 16, 1916. The anniversary year, called Cubs100, started with a special camp for cub scouts from across the UK at London Zoo. Since then thousands of small and large events have taken place to celebrate the cub scout centenary with events taking place at locations as far apart as Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Warwick Castle, the London Eye, Edinburgh Castle, The Angel of the North and the House of Commons.
[From the Eastern Daily Press]
It doesn’t sound like this is going to be some big gala, right? It sounds like she’ll be able to wear jeggings and boots and perhaps she’ll get to color in one of her books. What’s also sort of weird is that this is supposed to be sort of a busy time for Kate and the royals – they’re all trying to add some last-minute engagements so their year-end numbers will look better. But Kate hasn’t done an event since November 22nd. I don’t think she has anything scheduled for this week either. But she’ll have this Scout event next week, and then the following Monday (the 19th), she will join Harry and William for a Christmas party for Heads Together.
Here’s what Kate isn’t doing: attending galas for EACH, nor attending the annual Royal Variety Show (which was last night, and Charles and Camilla attended). Long story short: Kate seems to have basically given up on looking busy. She goes three weeks or longer without doing a stitch of work, even when “work” might involve a fancy gala for one of her few patronages. I still feel like something fishy is going on, but we’ll see. Maybe she is knocked up. Or maybe it’s something else entirely.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
And she wonders why she hasn’t yet received the queen’s Royal Family Order. Don’t hold your breath, honey.
Oh, and that last image? Brutal.
That last picture isn’t very flattering – she looks like a chipmunk with social anxiety. (But I *really* like her hat)
A chipmunk who’s flashing Big Blue despite being at some outdoor activity. SMH I wonder what she’d do if she lost it in the snow.
This is when she stuck her hand wearing Big Blue into the dough, right? That’s when I started to wonder if she’s not wearing the actual Diana ring, but a copy made in case this vapid twit loses it somewhere.
Without Diana’s ring nobody would recognise her. Diana never wore it off duty and certainly not to play in the woods!
Knocked up or a little face work pre-holidays? Or her holiday shopping schedule is just so utterly exhausting she can’t imagine adding to it…
She skipped SportsAid’s big fundraising gala held on 24th November. One of her patronages.
The last time she attended a SportsAid anything, they had to go to her at KP. And make it a gala dinner.
Still amazed Scout things are counting as official, since they originally touted it as volunteer and personal time.
Ha. What’s she going to wear to a rickety old scout hut? And will she get a badge? Does she have a scouting shirt to sew it onto? My username is only accidentally connected to scouting, btw. It’s actually an homage to Blossom and Six.
Either a badly tailored floaty coat dress or super tight skinny Zara jeans with those brown boots she loves to wear.
I wonder if Bear Grylls with be there – maybe thats why she’s going? He and Ben Ainslie seem her type 😉
Within the last 2 years, she was invited to attend a Scout event but begged off because of another engagement – an engagement that actually occurs a few days prior to the Scout event. Apparently, the top brass had to scramble to get her replacement – Bear Grylls.
Camel toe.
Flowing hair.
Expensive clothes.
Expensive wellies, in fact so expensive she tries to not get them dirty.
Full face of make up.
Big Blue.
Let’s see if she makes the little scouts sit outside in rain/snow falling down again.
Last time it was outside she wore thousands of pounds in trendy outdoor gear and the Ring of Doom.
Keep in mind, she’s only this lazy because the Queen is allowing her to be this lazy. Not a defense at all of her – I wish she’d step up and do more. But if the Queen wanted her working more – she would work more.
That’s not true. The Queen operates a hands off approach where she hopes the family is self motivated enough to work. When it reaches crisis point and the media is screaming for blood is when she has a word.
For those members of the family that are self-motivated, the Queen has never needed to have a word. With Kate, she has a word, we get a flurry of activity from Kate, long enough to calm the situation, and back to inertia and no work. And the cycle repeats ad nauseum since the girlfriend days when she took up the jigsaw job for similar reasons and dropped it after situation had calmed down.
In the past we haven’t seen this level of laziness even from Fergie because Philip managed the family and had no tolerance for laziness. Since his health started to decline in 2011, he has taken a back seat in managing the family.
This laziness is all on Kate.
Thanks for the clarification, LAK. I wish the Queen would step in more, but I guess she’s had enough of drama where her family is concerned.
It just blows my mind that Kate has all this opportunity at her fingertips and she does nothing. You would think you would want to impress your sovereign, your husband’s family, your country. But no. Not Kate. After being spoken to ONCE, I would have been on the workhorse train with a passion.
Could it be that the RF discourage her from being out there too much because they don’t want her to become too popular, another Diana? If she took that part h she’d overshadow Bill Normal and gain too much power and potential independence. Is her undoubted ‘laziness’ a RF decision as a means to keep her under control?
She hasn’t worked a full work day in her life, not even during the decade of being the royal girlfriend and trading on that status. The Palace once issued a rare statement, when the Middletons tried to blame them for her not working. The Palace made it clear that Middletons laziness was all on her, not them. She is bone deep lazy.
Royals set their own schedules. Both the royals and courtiers have admitted this many times through the years. The BRF isn’t holding her back.
I’m feeling smug. After she skipped EACH and Sportsaid, I referred to her skipping scouts (for their 100th, I think). I pointed out that when Will got called out for doing FA for the FA, he suddenly got a new football engagement. Aaaaand… Kate goes scouting! I called it! I really did! I don’t think I’ve ever been so right in my life. Time to buy some stock, methinks.
Betteboo2u: It’s no secret that the palace didn’t want another star on their hands, which extends to *William too. However, unlike William, the Palace would have preferred a worker hence all those Palace sanctioned PR articles during the engagement touting Kate’s working qualities and education ready to be unleashed onto the public post-wedding.
Further, the Palace has learnt the lessons of Diana by making sure she has all the support she needs and works at a pace SHE feels comfortable.
Sadly for them, her pace is more sloth than worker bee.
*William hated Diana’s ability to draw media attention and media thirsty ways. Personally i think he sought the opposite when picking a life partner. Someone as unmemorable as his mother was memorable. Sadly, that extends to work ethic because he recently complained about working parents whilst invoking Charles AND Diana’s busy working lives that apparently lett him abandoned on the nursery floor.
I honestly think she’s struggling with mental illness. Whether that’s PPD, clinical depression, generalized anxiety (or perhaps social anxiety), etc. That’s my armchair diagnosis. But when a person is even less interested than before, and goes weeks without being seen (more than before), it makes me think that. Especially since mental illness is her cause du jour. You work on causes that are personally important to you. KWIM?
I think so too. I know it’s easy to write her off as lazy and unengaged (and I’m not saying she’s not those things either) but I think she really struggles with the public side of royal life.
I was just about to say that, almost word-for-word. Her absences, her pet causes, her manic smiles, and the family’s refusing to address it all? I have the same hunch. And as someone with a mental illness that would make her job insanely terrifying, I feel for her.
I think so to.
As someone with anxiety, this is my hunch as well.
Well, if Joe Average had had a job he couldn’t do then he would get fired.
@Bitchy …. so Will was supposed to divorce her if she wound up being diagnosed with depression or anxiety? Something they may not have realized was a problem until she had to face the kind of attention and crowds she does?
But she was never that interested. Even before she married Will. If you remember, she didn’t work, then a short stint at Jigsaws, an even shorter stint in photography, and then supposedly at her parents company, and whatever happened with that idea of the organic baby food line she was going to start with Pippa.
Agree. Look at William-he does the same pitiful amount of work, because he doesn’t WANT to work. She may be awkward but regardless, she’s lazy.
It’s possible she is lazy, uninterested AND has mental health problems.
That might be the case, but what is his excuse? I find them to be both on the same state of mind as to how much they think they need to do- therefore I think it’s far fetched.
I think so, too. Especially when she is with William, God, she seems so hesitant, so afraid to take a wrong step. She actually seems a bit better on her own sometimes.
I’m finding I’m feeling more and more sorry for her. Can you imagine, really, not being able to walk out your front door, hop in the car and run to the store without being chased? Not being able to sit at an outdoor cafe and have a cup of coffee with your friend or your sister without dozens of reporters taking pics and strangers shoving their iPhones in your face?? I know she has privileges, but the price for them? I think she didn’t expect it, William is a jerk and she also has to worry about someone stealing and/or killing her children, who are huge targets.
Really? She can keep it. I wouldn’t want her gilded prison for one minute.
Yes, there is a pattern here.
Agree 100%.
Hmm, something is up and its not a 3rd baby. We’ll see how many last min events she squeeze’s in in the next couple of weeks before they all decamp to Sandringham.
Thou given that Haz is now back from his tour am sure they will be a few appearances with the 3 of them, there usually is when they need the good PR.
I agree with Betti, I think there is more to this than meets the eye! I don’t think they would dare announce another pregnancy especially with all the “workshy” backlash there is surrounding them at the moment. Its obvious her mother is more of an influence than the mother of any other bride has been allowed in past marriages – don’t forget it was Carole that took Will aside and asked him when he was going to provide a ring for her daughter, also making him promise that her & Mike would be kept in the loop at all times, especially regarding the grandkids. Plus If you look back at the photos, Kate lost alot of weight after Charlotte was born, infact I commented at the time that she’d gone back to her pre-George figure making me wonder if she was suffering from not only post natal depression but also an eating disorder! She seemed far more reluctant to appear in public after having Charlotte compared to George, she also looked far less healthier. Perhaps everything combined has just become too much. Yes she hung around for a decade before they got engaged, but being a girlfriend is totally different to being a royal wife – and you never know exactly what you’re getting into till its too late!
I don’t know why we continue to “watch” her. She isn’t gong to change, she will continue to be this lazy until she dies. Shirker workers are good at avoiding work.
Trying to make kate happen is way over.
Wow, the lazy chipmunk is gonna do some WORK?! Say it ain’t so!!
I just noticed the difference in her looks from the head photo, which I think is from 2014, and the last photo, from her trip to visit the Vermeer in Holland earlier this year. In the first photo, her posture is good and she looks appropriate, happy and healthy. In the last photo, however, she looks sooo haggard, her posture is that of an 80-year-old, she looks emaciated and her skin is horrible. What a difference two years can make! I think all is not well at Amner. Maybe all that stalking over 10 years really wasn’t worth it.
She is pregnant in that first photo. Ditto the picture with a knitted cap. The extra weight really suits her and perhaps being pregnant forced better posture.
The hunching has gotten worse over the years.
I agree. She always looks better pregnant. Softer especially around the face. Sort of like before she got engaged. IMO she is way too thin, and it makes her look harsher, and older.
I bow to thee, dear Kaiser, for that pic from the Scouting event showing off the Ring of Doom.
WTF???? She looks like she was expecting all the little Scoutees (I apologize…I’m blanking on what they are actually called) to line up and kiss her hand…oops I mean The Claw.
And we know how busy she is during the holidays!! Come on!! You think that chutney makes itself??
She is bone lazy. She may have mental health just now and if she does, then she has my sympathy. However she was lazy beforehand. She has been allowed to get away with it because the Queen and Charles are too scared of Whiny’s tantrums and pander to his every whim. If he approached his royal duties with any degree of enthusiasm then perhaps she would to.
Oh dear. I hope she doesn’t wear herself out.
I can’t wait to see the theme outfit she comes up with.
Uncanny resemblance to Meghan M in that last picture