The Queen's Funeral

 

Pomp meets circumstance

We're watching and making history all the time of course, in small ways, and sometimes bigger ones. These past six years we’ve been privy to rather more history than most people get what with Brexit, Covid and a seemingly endless cycle of recessions. So, the death of a Queen, however long lived, may appear to be a smaller affair. Not a bit of it. Even the television coverage of Covid did stop sometimes for other matters but ever since Queen Elizabeth the second passed away BBC and ITV have had virtually non stop Royal programming. If you really wanted to you could even watch a live stream of the lying in state of the coffin, surely of all things this is something that if you wanted to see it the preference would be to actually attend? The big day though was today. Why is it even in this blog, you're asking? Simply because it is the largest event any of us are likely to see this year.

The Queen

 

People are often cruel, judgmental or dismissive about the Royal Family in a way that they would never be about anyone else almost as if they didn’t think they are people. I’m not a Royalist nor anti- Royals it but the Queen has been a presence throughout my entire life in such a way that I feel like I know her even though I obviously don’t. Yes, I can smile at the number of times in the past twenty four hours the BBC has deployed their stock phrases (“mother of the nation”) in sombre tones and the way websites have unveiled their black livery but I do feel this all misses the sense of fun that the Queen herself preferred. After all, one of the last pieces of footage we have of her is tapping along on a teacup to `We Will Rock You`, the Queen playing along with Queen! Or the way she gamely engaged in a little James Bond fun a decade back for the Olympics. I reckon she’d prefer to be remembered like that.