So it’s a funny old world we live in, isn’t it? A lot of the time just fumbling through each day, trying not to do or say anything too dumb, too costly or too embarrassing to the kids or your one-up manager. Make it to the weekend. On other occasions, circumstances lead to contemplation of the wider meaning of things. Death being one of those occasions and goodness me it really was the big one last Thursday, you might have caught something on the news about it. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, HRH The Queen of our usually green and sometimes quite pleasant land, aged 96 and performing official duties up until a couple of days before her death. As a teenager I was staunchly anti-monarchy and, while I wouldn’t have a reigning hereditary monarch and Royal Family on the shopping list of requirements were I creating a country from scratch, my thoughts on the whole set up have got more nuanced and conflicting in my old age. As a result I sit somewhere between sorrow, bewilderment, amusement and antipathy towards the twenty four hour dedicated coverage and whole-hearted out-mourning efforts of the past week. The outpouring of grief, voiced so vociferously on the usually-at-pains-to-present-a-balanced-view BBC (Basically Biased Corporation or Mourn-Hub as it's currently known) in its hegemonic obsession with assuring us all that King Charles is massively popular and absolutely the country’s new rock, has at times spilled over into quite hilarious British madness. The closure of condom machines, temporary halting of children’s mechanical rides at local shops, forced expulsion of customers from
Holiday parks, memorial marmalade sandwiches attracting all the rats across London, banned use of supermarket tannoys and cessation of tweets from Jimmy’s Dildo Emporium all had me cracked up. My favourite tweet was “Can't believe they are going to make a MAN queen. This woke nonsense has gone too far”. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the Queen would have had a chuckle at some of the more bonkers bits.
A sense of fun was for sure one of the things about the Queen that did appeal to and resonate with me. Ultimately just a human, a mother/wife/sister/grandmother/employee with many duties and responsibilities, with faults and imperfections, in a position to either support and be shackled to the system she was born into and told was her duty or reject it like her Uncle. A human. Being.
When people die I always feel a general sadness even if I didn’t personally know them or like them - empathy for those in pain, a twinge of recognition of private loss, and an unconscious acknowledgement that one day the game will be up for me too. It is alternately scary and calming to know that there will be an end to all the scurrying and fumbling round eventually. Though there’ll be a lot less fuss for my own departure and it will be wholly pomp-free. Mind you I might see if I can arrange a bugler - that could add a nice flourish. They can play “Tijuana Taxi” or “Tico Tico”.
There’s also the whole weird thing that The Queen has been part of modern iconography the past 70 years - on money, stamps, post-boxes, pop art, recommending ketchup, mentioned on all sorts of official documents, broke many a Christmas Day and also the Covid pandemic up nicely with a message of hope and/or sympathy. This will all gradually disappear and it will be interesting to live though the transition, to see where this next chapter leads. The difficult second album. Elizabeth II seemed to embody a sort of “we may make a ham-fist of it at times but we’re lucky on the whole to be British” vibe that many people can identify with. But in a similar way to when Sir Bobby Robson died, at a time when his beloved team Newcastle United, a club that he worshipped as a boy and which chewed him up and spat him out as a manager, were demoted and on the ropes, it’s a crying shame that The Queen’s beloved country was at such a dreadfully low point when she passed. Other than the prospect of staging Eurovision and the Lionesses winning the UEFA Cup, it’s tough to say with any truth that things have been going well. Homelessness is increasing along with food banks and warmth banks, our new PM has reassured everyone that she is absolutely ready to press the nuclear button if needs be, there has been organised chaos and cancelled journeys at ports, airports, railway stations all Summer, they’re playing spin the wheel on This Morning to win your heating bill this winter, mental and physical health support is woefully under-funded and over-subscribed and the gap between rich and poor is increasing. It must have been like being back in wartime Britain for her Majesty these past few years - We’ll Meet Again indeed. So, despite the complexity, the irony and the crazy, on Monday I’ll take the extra day’s holiday uncomplainingly and sink a bottle or three of Dubonnet - or the Mexican non-union equivalent from Lidaldi - to recognise a life well-lived and well-loved, dedicated to duty.
One declares it a Slob Day where duty goes out of one’s window, one can put two fingers up to death and say “life’s for living!”.
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