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While we wait for Monday.
Sep. 15th, 2022 10:46 amOnly 1000 more days of it.
I had no knowledge of the red and grey bricks, the cobweb covered centuries of my home town or home country, till we returned from Singapore. All I knew was that I didn't want to leave. To this day I wonder if there could have been a sliding doors moment where somehow Dad stayed. The RAF left Singapore in 1971 and I often wondered why he couldn't just get a job there. But we came back, and I had to leave all the sunlight for England, which was a damned depressing place at the time. They loved the Queen, but she was in black and white still for a lot of people. And I stared while people told me to admire her.
I couldn't understand. What was I meant to admire? What was I meant to see? What had I failed to notice that they all found so obvious?
She wasn't pretty. She wasn't splendid. Admittedly my ideas of splendour might have been a little LaCroix meets Hans Christian Andersen, but still, I expected something... more. But this innate awe was something I was meant to have as an instinct, something stirring in my soul without anything to inspire it.
The phrase 'The Queen' was supposed to be enough.
And I was the wrong kind of child for it. I still am.
Why did I need to know what she did? This question was given back to me in lieu of a direct answer, just as I have heard it over this week; 'Oh, she worked so hard.' Doing what? No-one could give me details on this, in fact many got defensive about the question. Even now there is much gum flapping, little detail.
This week, a friend who has moved counties contacted me. There's much she loves about her new home, including the private school which her daughter attends. But here's a thing; neither my friend nor her family are religious. Just before the Queen's death, all those kids were shepherded into the assembly hall of their school to say prayers for the queen. They were given no choice in this, it was what they had to do and ought to want to do and were going to do.
The children prayed, the queen died, the little girl rolled her eyes and said, 'so that didn't work. But at least we'll get the day off.'
I had no knowledge of the red and grey bricks, the cobweb covered centuries of my home town or home country, till we returned from Singapore. All I knew was that I didn't want to leave. To this day I wonder if there could have been a sliding doors moment where somehow Dad stayed. The RAF left Singapore in 1971 and I often wondered why he couldn't just get a job there. But we came back, and I had to leave all the sunlight for England, which was a damned depressing place at the time. They loved the Queen, but she was in black and white still for a lot of people. And I stared while people told me to admire her.
I couldn't understand. What was I meant to admire? What was I meant to see? What had I failed to notice that they all found so obvious?
She wasn't pretty. She wasn't splendid. Admittedly my ideas of splendour might have been a little LaCroix meets Hans Christian Andersen, but still, I expected something... more. But this innate awe was something I was meant to have as an instinct, something stirring in my soul without anything to inspire it.
The phrase 'The Queen' was supposed to be enough.
And I was the wrong kind of child for it. I still am.
Why did I need to know what she did? This question was given back to me in lieu of a direct answer, just as I have heard it over this week; 'Oh, she worked so hard.' Doing what? No-one could give me details on this, in fact many got defensive about the question. Even now there is much gum flapping, little detail.
This week, a friend who has moved counties contacted me. There's much she loves about her new home, including the private school which her daughter attends. But here's a thing; neither my friend nor her family are religious. Just before the Queen's death, all those kids were shepherded into the assembly hall of their school to say prayers for the queen. They were given no choice in this, it was what they had to do and ought to want to do and were going to do.
The children prayed, the queen died, the little girl rolled her eyes and said, 'so that didn't work. But at least we'll get the day off.'
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