Move Along Now

Well, I was disappointed. From the descriptions ahead of the event, I really thought the Lord Chamberlain was literally going to snap a ceremonial white rod over his knee at the Queen’s funeral and lay it on her coffin, whereas what he actually carried was a plain wooden stick somewhat less charismatic than a snooker cue and which just clicked apart with the slightest touch. How undramatic.

There was something to offend everyone within the space of ten minutes on the World Service this afternoon. Rob Watson’s statement that the monarchy makes British people ‘think, Our history is pretty cool’ might be taken as an insult to all the many victims of that history, but it was a matter of opinion. When, however, he went on to say that ‘a head of government and a head of state were changed in 3 days with the minimum of fuss’ he neatly glossed over the fact that changing the head of government took months of the ruling party arguing with itself, and then that new head of government being selected by a tiny group of party members without reference to anyone else; and that it would never have happened in the first place without the previous incumbent’s trashing of truth, the law, and the constitution. Pretty cool, all that. He was followed by Professor Alice Hunt from Southampton University, who topped her comment that the Coronation would be ‘the only ceremony that has any constitutional standing’ (OK, so Edward VIII was never really king and the many Acts of Parliament he signed were invalid) with the breathtaking insistence, speaking for the late Queen and the whole nation, that ‘nobody really believes that there is a divine being at work here, and yet that is what the Coronation will say’. Where does the BBC get these people from? Southampton University, apparently.

I pondered my own reaction. I don't feel emotionally involved in the Queen's passing, though I appreciate the emotions of those who are, and in fact it's those who affect me. I don't feel watching a TV programme is 'taking part in history', and I deal with death and life every day so I don't need more meditations on mortality. And yet, even I could hardly fail to be affected by the pipes and drums, especially when the pipes, at least, were at a safe distance. When the jabbering commentators straining to find something meaningful to say fell silent it was even moving, not least because inside that grand coffin draped in the royal standard was the body of a tiny old lady: ‘if she gets any smaller, she’ll disappear completely’, S.D. said to me the last time we met – but he was friendlier with the late Queen Mother, it has to be said.

At Swanvale Halt, we had just enough big candles to keep the memorial to the Queen illuminated until today was passed. In the short commemoration we kept at the end of mass on the 11^th I used the Kontakion, so it was pleasing to hear it in the committal service today; and because His Grace of Hornington was on holiday I ended up reading prayers at the local Accession Proclamation alongside our republican Mayor. I hadn't intended to do anything else: I watched in increasing incredulity the goings-on at Fr Thesis’s church in London where it seems nothing has been celebrated but Requiem Masses for the Queen since her death, and pondered dropping him a line to remind him he was allowed to do something else. But in the end I weakened and did do a Requiem of our own yesterday evening; we sang a bit, and got 16 souls. 73 people signed the Book of Condolence deposited with us by the Town Council, and a member of the congregation had to be persuaded not to walk out yesterday morning after Greta the Lay Reader alluded to the new King not paying inheritance tax in her sermon. She was the only one.

As we say with our Spring Fair, planning for the next one has (probably) already begun. I look forward to the choir of St George’s Chapel Windsor singing ‘Ying Tong Iddle I Po’ in twenty-odd years' time ... !