I Wanna See Some History

February 27, 2023February 26, 2023Leave a comment

And in the end, they put the Queen in the ground, and that was that. The Funeral was a Real History Moment, the sort that gets played back in years to come on history shows, with the AI clone of Simon Schama in the year 2081 stating solemnly, “Even for us smart-alec artificial-intelligence history bots, just simple bits of code flying around on a Silicon Valley server, even we had to stop sniggering and start paying attention, knowing with a suspicious lump in the HDMI cable that something immense had happened, the death of a matriarch; this was history happening right before our very photoreceptors.” We had to watch, of course. The Queen’s Funeral was long, solemn, and quite the spectacle. It was like the Avengers Endgame of British royalty and politics, and although the Queen’s last words probably weren’t “And I Am Elizabeth II”, she did somehow snap her fingers and make Boris Johnson disappear into dust. She worked right up to the end, and one of her final acts was to usher in a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, who managed to hang on to her job until just after the Queen’s Funeral. We didn’t watch the Funeral live; we watched it on YouTube after getting home from work. I’m glad I was in America. My friends back home said the mood in Britain was getting out of hand, which doesn’t sound like Britain at all does it, and said the BBC had started to be called ‘MournHub’. In the end though, we got the show, we got the pomp and pageantry, and I will admit, the version of the National Anthem that they played in Westminster Abbey, in that place, was easily the best version you will ever hear, much better than the dreary durge they belt out at England matches, or that used to be played on BBC2 at about midnight before Close. This stirred the soul, it made my feel feel ticklish. I think it may have been the last time we’ll hear the God Save The Queen with that lyric in a while, in my lifetime anyway, it’ll be all God Save The King now. Sounds a bit off, like something Lord Whats-his-name would say on Downton Abbey.

I drew the Westminster bit in Procreate, before taking a break and then watching the Windsor part on my iPad, drawing on a brown envelope, making those red coats of the Scots Guard stand out. It was a long old drive up to Windsor Castle. The Queen was buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and now we have a King, Charles III. Honestly when I first saw that headline, I thought it read “Charles ill” and I thought, oh here we go again already.

The last event like this I’d actually watched was the Funeral of Princess Diana, back in that frankly bonkers period of time in September 1997. Anyone who was alive at the time will remember this, but for those of us in the UK the response was utterly ridiculous. I had no idea the country could react in such a way to anything. On the night Diana was killed in that car crash in Paris, along with Dodi Al Fayed, I remember that I was unironically eating in an Egyptian restaurant just around the corner form Kensington Palace which had pictures of Diana on the wall, and I even said “wouldn’t it be funny if Diana and Dodi came in right now.” They had not been off the front pages of the newspapers all week, their fling in France being like Christmas and birthdays rolled into one for all the tabloid editors, gossip columnists and paparazzi. They were ruthless; she was not the ‘People’s Princess’ or the ‘Queen of Hearts’ back then, that would not be until a few days later. I didn’t know Diana had died until early the next morning, when my Mum woke me up to tell me the news. She was shocked and upset, being a big fan of the Royals, and it was very shocking news. Throughout my young life I’d grown up watching the Diana story unfold – the wedding of Charles and Diana was one of my earliest memories, and we had a street party for that, one in which my dad won the “dad’s piggyback race”, where you had to run to the top of the street with your kid on your back. My mum did meet Diana at least once, while working on catering jobs, though she regrets that she never got to meet the Queen. The most famous person I met while working on those catering jobs (because I used to work as a waiter when I was first old enough to work) was Ronnie Corbett, and he was brilliant. Anyway, we got the first edition of the Sunday newspapers, News of the World or one of those old rags that don’t exist any more, and the first few pages were pure Historic Moment – the shock, the tears, the gushing about the Queen of Hearts is dead, the anguish, the instant canonization of Diana – and yet, because editors had to get this newspaper out in time for people to grab the papers with the biggest headlines, they had not yet updated all the articles a few pages deep into the paper, which were still full of “Diana is disgracing the nation” and showing long range pictures of her in skimpy outfits with Dodi on a yacht off the Cote d’Azur. Still, I had no time to join in the national mourning, because I was off to France myself, taking the coach to Strasbourg with my friend Terry for a few days of being silly, a little vacation before I started university. While we were away, people would ask us, “are you doing ok?” and we’d be like, “er yeah, we’re fine,” thinking, strange thing to keep asking us.

We didn’t know that back in England the place was slowly becoming Diana Crazy. I sometimes call Britain “Totally Normal Island”, but this was the country at it’s Most Totally Normal. The sea of flowers in front of Kensington Palace was only part of it. When we arrived back in London on our coach from France the country had been gripped with the Diana Fever for several days already, and we were a little taken aback. I went to Kensington Palace to have a look at the flowers; hundreds of people were standing around, many bawling their eyes out. My mum signed the remembrance book down there; I didn’t know what to write so I just put some Beatles lyrics in there, I can’t even remember what. It probably wasn’t ‘I Am The Walrus’. Then the Funeral took place. The whole country closed down, shops, schools (I mean it was a Saturday so they were closed anyway), and we all sat around the telly while about a million people lined the streets of central London, watching on big screens down at Hyde Park. This was Funeral with Entertainment. This was the 90s, we had an excited new young cool PM Tony Blair steering the ship Cool Britannia, and Diana was friend of the famous – her good pal Elton John performed a rewrite of one of his classics, singing “Goodbye England’s Rose”, his eyebrows bobbing up and down as that guaranteed number one echoed through the hallowed stones of Westminster Abbey. And the Diana was put into the ground up at the family home at Althorp (which we learned was pronounced ‘Awl-trup’), and then over the next few weeks the country blinked and looked around as if coming out of some trance and went, what the bloody hell was that about? I started university a couple of weeks later and even then, people were not sure what had just happened, and how we were supposed to think about it other than some collective temporary madness. It’s something we can all look back on though, all remembered slightly differently, all with different degrees of cynicism or sadness, but it was a Historical Moment and gives expatriate Brits like me us a funny story to tell Americans.

have I got queues for you

February 25, 2023February 23, 20238 Comments

In the end, they put the Queen in the ground, and changed the national anthem. Next will come the new stamps, bank-notes, post-boxes, coins, and change all the jail names from Her Majesty’s Prison to His Majesty’s Prison. Before they put her in the ground though, the Queen’s coffin was displayed in Westminster Hall for a few days while the entire nation popped in to have a look. The whole thing was broadcast live, like they used to do with Big Brother, so I tuned in and sketched the view.

The Queue was a pretty big deal though wasn’t it. Not being in Britain, it feels like I have missed out on my home country’s massive cultural water-cooler moment. There’s no way I would have spent ten, eleven, twelve hours queuing up myself to see the big box they kept the Queen’s body in, though I would have probably gone down to draw the Queue. It was a Genuine Historic Occasion. The Queue itself became the attraction. People were probably queuing up to see The Queue. I’m surprised the government didn’t charge people a pound so they could use the alliterative phrase, “Queue for a Quid to see the Queen” (from the people who brought you “Bung a Bob for a Big Ben Bong”, which is a real thing an actual British government came up with).

For those who don’t know, The Queue (official title “The Queue to attend Her Majesty The Queen’s Lying-in-State”) stretched from Westminster Hall, where the late Queen lay-in-state, down Lambeth way (Oi! ‘Ave a banana), and all the way down the south bank of the Thames, where cab drivers once feared to tread, right past Tower Bridge, all the way into Bermondsey where it zigzagged round Southwark Park like a Pokemon Go party. It was said to be between five and ten miles long, and maybe half a million people lined up in total. Maybe more, almost certainly more. I would not have wanted to be in that line for so long, but it must have been infectious. Perhaps I’d have gone there and found it hard not to join The Queue. All sorts were in that Queue, even David Beckham waited in line for twelve hours, doing his bit, before going off to join a different Q, Qatar, as an embarrassingly well-paid ambassador. At the time, I wondered to my wife how long it might take until this particular Cultural Event is turned into a movie, a kind of ‘Love Actually’ style film, just called “The Queue”. It would feature seven or eight different storylines from people within The Queue, as they move along the Thames, people of all walks of life, with hilarious relationships forming, commentary on the 2020s-era cultural wars. Just like Love Actually it would feature many of the usual actors who show up in these types of things, your Grants, your Thompsons, your Neesons, plus a few newer ones like Tom Holland who would for some reason get into a caper that leads to him falling into the Thames and being fished out by a copper, probably played by Idris Elba or someone, and keep being made to go to the back of The Queue, blushing at the girls as he is dragged past a second or third time. There would be a few comedy cameos: Rowan Atkinson would have a small role as play that guard who fell over; Matt Lucas would play Boris Johnson in a mop wig; James Corden would be that awful bloke who rushed to the Queen’s coffin knocking down that little girl, annoying his grandmother who is played by Catherine Tate (there would be an after credit scene where we find out they actually got together and you see them having afternoon tea and the girl shoving Corden out of the way to get a coronation chicken sandwich, to rounds of laughter). There would be small cameos from famous Hollywood stars; Harrison Ford would play Joe Biden, and Mark Hamill would play one of the guards standing by the coffin, and Ford would say to him, “Aren’t you a little short for a Beefeater?” (Credit goes to my wife for that joke). But it wouldn’t be about the Royals or the VIPs, it would be about the Real People in The Queue, because the Real People are the ones who this whole Cultural Event really for. In fact we wouldn’t see The Royals at all, if they appear it would be just the backs of their heads (though we would find out later that they were cameos from other really famous people like Lady Gaga or Woody Harrelson). Between the actual movie bits there would be actual footage from The Queue with some of those real people, with the usual music, like those airport scenes in Love Actually. I actually kinda want to watch this film now. The taglines would be great/shite. “You can choose your friends…you can’t choose who you spend fifteen hours in a queue with” “The best things come to those who wait…in line” Etc and so on. It would be turned into a Broadway musical, “Queue: The Music”. Ok, this movie’s being made. “God Save The Queue”.

her majesty was a pretty nice girl

September 8, 2022February 14, 20232 Comments

You probably heard the news: the Queen is dead. She died today in Balmoral, peacefully and with her family. We all knew it was going to happen some day, but it was a surprise, nonetheless. 96 years old, that’s quite the innings. I did always hope she would make it to 100, not least so she could write a letter to herself. There will be a lot of things said over the next few days and weeks by a lot of people, but it is undoubtedly the passing of an era, a real historic moment for Britain. Whatever any of us think about the whole monarchy thing, Elizabeth II was a good person, a very likeable person, quite a funny person and a very popular Queen, even if people didn’t like many of the rest of them. She was The Queen for 70 years, all my life, almost all my mum’s life, one of her earliest memories is the coronation. I was in London with my mum during the Platinum Jubilee. In her time the Queen had 15 Prime Ministers, with the newest one coming in just this week. She did manage to get quite a few Prime Ministers in her last few years. She saw England win the World Cup and Spurs win the Double, both of which were a really long time ago now. She saw the rise and break-up of the Beatles, and was still around when Get Back finally came out. Ironically, last night I learned the ukulele chords to ‘Her Majesty’, not knowing that the next day she would die. I drew this tonight, it has been a long time since I drew on one of those brown envelopes, I still have a big stack of those. I’ll probably give it to my mum. Sh really loved the Queen. I expect the Funeral will be fairly massive. And then I saw that Charles was ill too, and I thought wow that’s all they need, but I misread, it actually said ‘King Charles III’. So Prince Charles is now King Charles the Third. I always thought he would take on a different name when crowned, such as George or Henry, but that might have been too confusing for all those people who get confused when someone changes their name. It actually happens a lot. Many monarchs were called something different, Popes do it all the time, Anakin Skywalker changed his named to Darth Vader. I like the sound of “Charles III”. We need a new national anthem now – I know we just keep the same one and change “Queen” to “King” but maybe now is the time to choose an all-new anthem, one that’s a bit livelier at the big sporting occasions. I do have to get an updated ruler now – I have one of those ones with the names of all the English kings and queens on it – but that’s what happens when a monarch dies, you get a new ruler.

So rest in peace your majesty, you longest-serving British monarch, it’s going to be a long time before anyone breaks that record, and will Britain ever have another Queen? Probably not in my lifetime.