All right, let me be clear here. I don’t mean I actually had tea with the Queen,… well not in person anyway. But when I was a Cub Scout, about eight years old, my Arkaela explained to me that whenever we saw the flag, the Union Jack, it was the same thing as being in the presence of the Queen. That was what the flag was, you see? And my home village is decked out at the moment with more Union Jacks than on V E day. It is of course The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Sixty years as monarch, and therefore as the spiritual mother of the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth.
The last Jubilee, I was a young man of seventeen, and I recall spending that sunny weekend in 1977, cleaning my motorbike and being generally oblivious to the fuss and all that Union Jack waving. But now I’m older and admit to raising a glass in my back garden to her majesty. We celebrated with tea and cakes in fact – the tea being served in my good lady’s grandmother’s best China – something that’s normally reserved only for family funerals.
Yesterday the BBC gave us all a first class ticket to a ride down the Thames in the company of Her Majesty, and though the weather was as atrocious over London as it was for us in Lancashire, the day proved to be a magnificent spectacle, though I felt for everyone on the breezy Thames, and shivered for them, but it was a nautical adventure, and true navy types aren’t daunted by a bit of weather.
This evening, the BBC gave me another first class ticket, this time to a musical concert in front of Buckingham Palace, and though the weather here was fine and would normally have tempted me away from the indoors, I remained glued to the goggle box and was absolutely amazed by the spectacle, also that anybody could inspire such a gathering. There were an estimated 200,000 in London tonight, and that’s some concert. And all in sincere celebration of the achievement of an 86 year old lady.
This amazes me.
But it shouldn’t.
The world is in a terrible state. We’re all feeling it. The global materialist, freemarket free-for-all, is in its last gasp death throes. Who else are we to look up to now? Our political leaders? Well,.. no. Frankly they’re not showing themselves at their best, locked in an unholy battle with the gutter press and the big business fat cats – a nefarious trio, submerged up to their necks in mud and all of them looking a little besmirched, a little tarnished, a little lame, and we, a bemused public, wondering what the hell’s going on, and who we’re supposed to look to for an example. I mean who the hell is left that’s worthy of this symbol of nationhood? Who else do we clean our shoes for? For whom do we straighten our ties every morning?
God help me. I’m fifty one years old, a liberal, a rebel, a mystic, and I discover I’m a royalist.
Unity in Diversity.
God Save the Queen.
Graeme out.
The Rivendale Review 
She is indeed a woman worthy of great respect. I think there’s something to this whole idea of royalty. They don’t need to grovel like political leaders do for campaign donations, and they’re not beholden to a bunch of special interest groups. We have a pop star for a president. You have a queen, a figurehead, some people may argue, but a lady who represents her country with dignity and grace–no small task and something that should inspire awe. I’m not surprised at your discovery.
Thanks walk2write. I remember when Obama was elected, I was quite excited. I’d heard him speak during his election campaign and his words raised the hairs on the back of my neck – such rousing oratory, I thought this man can do anything. He can change the world! But since then? It’s not like I understand US politics any more than I understand British, but it’s like he got squashed under the weight of office?
All the best
Michael
[…] They got worse. Much worse. Still, there was definitely something in the air that summer, because I wrote warmly of Her Madge as being the ideal of a nation, and something – the ideal I mean – worth polishing […]