This week I came out to my colleagues as a royalist.
They laughed, a lot - especially when I showed them the attached photograph - and my fear that confessing my fascination would make them take me less seriously seemed well-founded.
But there's no escaping it. It's true. I likethe British royals and probably always will, political reservations aside.
I like the lucky sods so much that when William and Kate came to Wellington - my then-hometown - in 2014, I took a long lunch and dragged my not-that-keen friend Katya down to join the throngs waiting in the rain to see them.
I've been interested in the royal family since I was aged 2 and went to England to visit my mum's side of the family in Berkshire.
Growing up on a Rotorua farm with half my family on the other side of the world, seeing the royals in the local news was a way to feel connected to my British kin.
Following royal news helped me feel like I was part of something that was important to my far-away family.
Nanny and my aunts and uncles in England would post me newspaper clippings, commemorative items and collectable magazines of the big events and royal history.
Charles and Diana married years before I was born but, thanks to my rellies, as a little girl I had stacks of stuff about their lavish wedding to pore over and use to illustrate my primary school research projects - so much so that in my memory it feels like I watched their wedding live, as I would their sons' decades later.
I was 9 when Diana died and I was devastated. I devoured the many copies of British newspapers with giant headlines that arrived from England soon after.
There were huge photo spreads of her funeral and the images of her sad and stoic sons walking behind her coffin. Harry was just a few years older than me.
When William, all grown up and prematurely balding, married Kate Middleton my family sent me a commemorative tea towel - a Union Jack with the happy couple's smiling faces.
I took that tea towel along with me the day William and Kate came to Civic Square in Wellington. I didn't have an adorable baby in a "Marry Me George" T-shirt to grab their attention so it just seemed appropriate. Better than a $2 shop flag, anyway.
My close encounter, annotated. Photo/Andrew Johnson
But no such luck, neither the Duke nor the Duchess took any notice of my tea towel in the masses of people. Still, it was a good time - see photo. They were tall and thin and posh and smiley - and real at last.
If I was in Windsor this weekend for Harry and Meghan's wedding, I'd be in the throngs, hopefully waving an updated tea towel.
I'll just have to hope for a honeymoon tour down under.
