Somebody has just said, in outrage: I can’t believe they’re going to make a man Queen. This woke nonsense has gone too far.
This made me laugh. It is the only thing about the whole thing that has, although the day has not been without its interesting moments.
Oliver, now a pupil at the school once attended by the monarch, is being taught by black-clad teachers and obliged to impeccable behaviour and immaculate uniform. This is a mark of respect, and I should jolly well think so too, but of course it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that some bored journalist, seeking a new line of interminable Royal whittering, will turn up at the gates in the hope of some rascally behaviour to be featured in a tabloid. If I were the headmaster I would keep all children stored in the cellar until the funeral is over.
Lucy, who tends towards immaculate uniform anyway, no longer has a picture of the Queen to be saluted every morning, presumably until Kettering Police Station has asked King Charles if he would mind sending them a selfie to replace it. She has had a traumatic day, not because we no longer have a Queen, but because some lunatic punched her in the face this morning.
She is, of course, perfectly all right. The lunatic was under arrest anyway, and lots of other police officers witnessed the assault in time eagerly to wrestle her assailant to the ground. She could have had the rest of the day off, but decided that if King Charles can carry on, so could she, and in any case it wasn’t a spectacularly nose-bursting punch or anything like that, so she continued, virtuously, until the weekend had officially started.
I am a bit uncomfortable with the title King Charles. Quite apart from the phrase seeming a bit strange and unfamiliar, it does make me feel as if it should be followed by the word Spaniel. I suppose it won’t be long until we just get into the habit of saying The King, and we will all know what we are talking about.
I listened to the endless radio coverage of it this morning, whilst sewing some labels into some new socks for Oliver. Oliver if you are reading this I managed to catch the post and they should reach you tomorrow. I was very pleased indeed to discover that the postal strike has been cancelled, I should jolly well think so as well, they are the Royal Mail and probably saluted the Queen every morning as well.
I like the radio coverage. I ought to be doing all sorts of things instead of listening to it in the taxi, but I don’t want to. It isn’t every day that the Queen dies and it should be either the Queen, or silence. In the case of Radio Four there have only been a very few moments when I thought they should have gone for silence, so probably they aren’t doing too bad a job.
I did some ironing and the sewing and made some biscuits and some mayonnaise to the accompaniment of non-stop rabbiting about the last seventy years, and sighed and felt a bit tearful and thought that every other country in the world ought to be jolly envious. We might not be as big or rich as America, we haven’t got kangaroos and Ayers Rock like Australia, and it rains all the time like it doesn’t do anywhere else at all, but we have had the Queen and they jolly well haven’t. Even the ones that shared her didn’t actually have her on the doorstep. They couldn’t pop round to Buckingham Palace and swing on the railings and wonder if she might be looking out from behind the net curtains.
It is very quiet in Windermere. I have been on the taxi rank for absolutely ages and nobody wants a taxi.
I am not at all surprised.
This is not a time for parties.
