I’m quite glad the weather is poor on Day 2 of the Great
Jubilee Breakout. It is quintessentially
British and allows us to do our traditional British celebrations with even
greater enthusiasm and fervour. It would
have been no fun to hold our 9,000 plus street parties in the glaring heat of
an unseasonal midday sun. Much better to
be able to re-locate them all to the village hall and quickly see if the Morris
Men can perform tomorrow instead. And of
course, as is the way when large numbers of British strangers abandon the
modern custom of not talking to each other and gather together, those awkward
few hours after introducing each other can now be followed, with relief, by
lengthy discourses about the weather. I
can’t wait to hear my first “mustn’t grumble” and the more pithy “typical”.
So this is Jubilee Land.
Stuck with something to do that hasn’t been done on previous Jubilees or
Royal Weddings, the government came up with a four day weekend instead. Like we need an extended holiday in the midst
of a recession that Dave and his pals are trying to elongate, but there we
go. Yesterday was officially Day One and
it began with the remarkable appearance of the Queen at the Epsom Derby. Since she’s only been turning up to this
particular event since her coronation it was definitely a classic opener to the
four days of increasingly desperate celebrations that are unfolding. I was a little disappointed that the wall to wall
coverage occasionally broke off to report on some tedious crowd in Tahrir
Square who hadn’t quite got the message about this being a weekend of
celebration for Queen Elizabeth II, not for the incarceration of Hosni Mubarak,
but I guess world communications aren’t what they used to be. Didn’t we used to run Egypt?
The breathtaking footage of the Queen alighting from her car
to listen to an opera singer do her best to make the national anthem sound,
well, anthemic, was followed by the oft repeated expectation that the Queen
might one day have a winner at the Derby.
I didn’t really understand this.
If she’d followed everyone else and put her tenner on the absolute dead
cert favourite she could have had a definite winner yesterday. And it was even called Camelot, presumably in
honour of the Queen’s great great great (etc) grandfather King Arthur of
blessed memory. The Queen’s not short of
a bob or two and can afford to invest in good horse racing advice, so a bit of a
Jubilee learning curve for her there I hope.
The Epsom Derby was about it as far as Jubilee celebrations
went yesterday and given that it’s something of a fixture in the annual
calendar I’m not sure it wins many marks for originality, but things are bound
to ratchet up today with the Grand Boat Pageant. Then of course there’s today’s “Big Rainy
Jubilee Lunch” in lots of streets and round lots of village greens (I’m off to my brother’s house for a family
gathering as he resolutely refuses to join the hoi polloi). What I’m really looking forward to is the
grand beacon lighting on Monday. We have
one in the village, and my aged mother (who I hope to goodness never manages
the difficult 21st. century technical art of accessing this blog)
has even been asked to be one of the beacon fire lighters, which I sincerely
hope doesn’t mean she has to cover herself in lighter fuel and take a running
jump onto the bonfire. She’s really not up to running these
days. Yes, Jubilee Land is a fantastic,
fun loving place, although we shouldn’t forget the serious message at its
heart, of a woman who was born to the wrong parents at the wrong time and has
had to spend sixty years waving, cutting ribbons, watching Morris Men, living
in a range of castles and palaces in need of modernisation and never getting a
winner at the Derby.
1 comment:
οἱ is the Ancient Greek definite article. Referring to "the hoi polloi" is incorrect, as the "the" is redundant - in essence you're saying "the the masses". One should refer to "hoi polloi" (sans "the") or one could opt for "the polloi" which has a much less satisfying ring.
Hope this helps.
Post a Comment