Song for a Rich Woman

I never sing the national anthem, because it's not about my nation. It's not about Great Britain, it's not about England. Scots and Welsh sing about their homelands. England sings about the person at the top, which may well prove to be a problem when the person at the top is less than impressive. Right now, the indoctrination of reverence still infatuates many, but it's going to take a dip when Charles is crowned. I don't sing for the health of a wealthy old lady particularly - if she's happy, fair enough, why not? - but my expressions of loyalty to my homeland should not be tied in to some enforced worship of the Windsors, especially when some of them had Nazi sympathies anyway!

But let's assume those sympathies were silly butterfly moments, when popular feeling wipes out common sense, even if the monarch was truly extraordinary, no one person can embody the state, or the state becomes prone to the foibles of a single human being; we would be a very different nation now if Edward VIII had not abdicated. How grotesque then, our adoring anthem to a king who would have made us Hitler's subjects?

Eizabeth's triumph is to display no such vulnerabilities. She is no fool but a cypher upon which the population can imprint their regal fantasies, defined only by strict adherence to protocol. She has done this very well, though I would argue not well enough to earn the vast fortune she has amassed, but that is another discussion.

If it transpired that Elizabeth was a nazi, or had some kind of similar shameful secret, the shock would rock and even possibly smash the nation's sense of identity, because we have invested so much in the adoration of some rich people. We should be stronger than that. And when Charles is king, we must be, because he represents no identity other than his own.

To those who say, 'We are stronger than that, the monarchy isn't Great Britain's identity,' I ask, 'Why then, don't we have an anthem that reflects us?'

England needs its own anthem anyway, even if GB is determined to remain Windsor Worship land. Jerusalem would be perfect.

The Name

There was a man thrown by his enemies into the Volga river. His body tumbled along the currents fast until it found a place where the waters eddied into ice formed thick over his head.

He hit at the frozen world with his fists, trying to break through, and when he knew it wasn't going to work, he tried to write a message with his nails; little stick letters on the sheets of ice above him . The message wasn't to anyone; he barely knew what he was writing. In the end it was blood and nerves, a mindplay to keep him from despair. He looked again at the words, his name, a mighty, once-dreaded name. But by then, even his prodigious lungs could sustain him no more and the man fell away into the caves of the under-river.

The ice was so thick it didn't break up until late Spring, when a bear broke through it to hunt fish, and the stick words broke too, like a child's puzzle. If a bard finds the man's remains, he could guess a fine tale of deception and ambition, blood and war.

But the man's real story is of clear water over his bones, a red sun growing younger as flowers rise to meet it, winter that turns into spring. He watches it all at peace, and doesn't even remember his name.