Well, he’s been crowned now, and what a jolly super occasion it was too.
Obviously we were glued to it on YouTube, since we hadn’t actually been invited, and sighed and beamed along with the rest of the nation, apart from some miserable boot from Bridgerton who grumbled afterwards that the Royal Family were all white people.
I imagine the Royal Family in Ghana is all black. These things happen.
It was all thoroughly marvellous, although a bit incomprehensible. I could not, for instance, quite grasp the exact benefit to the nation of making the new King take his clothes off, as if he was in the changing room at Marks & Spencer, and then presenting him with a couple of ancient bangles, a curtain, a curtain rail and an odd glove.
It did look like a curtain. I defy anybody to think otherwise. It even had a dangling gold fringe, the sort favoured by armchair-trimmers and cushion upholsterers circa nineteen seventy five.
Also the necessity for the odd glove bypassed me, and I wondered if the other had been lost in the ancient catacombs of Westminster Abbey somewhere, since I don’t recall that we have ever had any one-handed monarchs. It wasn’t even as if they gave him a decent falcon to go with it, which would have made the ceremony exciting, and would have been no less weird than Here Is The Sacred Spoonful Of Oil.
Also I couldn’t help but wonder why nobody has ever done anything about all the graffiti all over the throne. I was half expecting the King would stand up to reveal a picture of a willie and the legend: Prince Harry Woz Ere.
Also the King had clearly borrowed his shoes from Dick Whittington last Christmas and forgotten to give them back.
Anyway, it was all jolly wonderful. The poor Queen looked utterly terrified, and the loathsome, toad-like Archbishop stood there in a gold-trimmed frock studded with jewels, and lectured Heads of State about giving their wealth to the poor. He ignored the other sixty million people watching, apart from explaining, presumably with impeccable Scriptural authority, that God supported us reducing our carbon footprints. If I had been the King I would have asked the Chief Rabbi to do it, which would have had the twin benefit of upsetting Jeremy Corbyn as well.
I quite like Jeremy Corbyn really, apart from his misfortunate politics, some of which defy logic so thoroughly that Justin Welby could probably quote from them in his sermons.
Oh, he did, silly me.
Anyway, that is now quite thoroughly Yesterday’s News.
Today I am not watching the Coronation. Tonight I am in Cambridge, sitting peaceably in my camper van at the side of a quiet country road, listening to the birds, who are still singing with throaty enthusiasm, even though it is almost ten o’clock at night, perhaps they get double time on Bank Holiday weekends.
I am content. I have thundered all the way down in the camper van, which has made it here yet again, I could teach Justin Welby a thing or two about miracles, I can tell you.
I am sitting in the back, having just had a perfect dinner of peppered mackerel and home-made mayonnaise, after which I had to open the windows otherwise the camper van will smell fishy for weeks. I have lit an upmarket scented lamp that I have been saving for the occasion, and polished off a miniature picnic bottle of Rioja, likewise.
It is warm here. Tomorrow I am going to go and learn things.
Did I mention that I was doing a Master’s’s’ degree at Cambridge University?
Well, I am.
