While we wait for Monday.
Sep. 15th, 2022 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootOnly 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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no subject
Date: 2022-09-15 11:18 am (UTC)She attended an awful lot of state dinners and garden show openings.
That is work.
Though she and her spawn got room and board, so you know: Fair exchange. 😀
I think—as I noted in our earlier exchange on this topic—it's really that she was around for such a long time. She was a fixed object! So, people are having to recalibrate their sense of temporality, and that's affecting their reactions, making them more feverish and fannish.
On the media end of things, I think there's a big push to sell the idea of royalty. I seem to remember that recent polls say royalty is not particularly popular among Brits younger than 40, and of course, QEII's death would be the perfect time for a regime change. I think whatever passes as the deep state in the U.K. iis colluding with the media to make certain a regime change does not come to pass.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-16 07:23 am (UTC)I don't think her passing would be the time for regime change, because of all you see now; the maudlin sentimentality, the uncontrolled jingoism, the actual support for oppression, provided the justification for it is popular.
No, if it is going to happen soon, it will be Charles' reign I suspect, because the public never really liked him. Much is going on now to try to change that. This funeral will be milked, and then the build up to the coronation will begin, all of it a grand circus to cover the fact that there's a lot less bread than there was - for ordinary folk at least.