So Long
Look, how we think about you - how we name you - immediately colours the rest. So no point messing about. I’ll call you Liz, you call me Mags. Sorted.
We lived such a long time together. You and me, you and 50-odd-million other UK residents. And now the inevitable, welcoming eternal rest shines upon you. The debt we all owe nature.
It may seem impolite, and it’s not intended to, but as a small child I did not have a view of you and yours, positive or negative. Maybe it was a Catholic thing, and maybe the Queen-shaped gap was filled with the Virgin Mary and the Holy Family. When I became a teenager, it became the fashion to be quite rude about royalty, but it was fashionable to take the rip out of all of ‘The Establishment’. So again nothing especially personal intended. There was some hilarious satire though, especially around the time of your eldest’s investiture as Prince of Wales. In my recollection, we never expected you to notice let alone feel hurt by it.
Our telly conked out the very day that your Anne married that sausage magnate’s son. Me and me mam got our raincoats on and went to stand outside the Rediffusion shop. In those days, live broadcasts were played on sets in the window displays of electronics shops, and so we were able to ooh and aah at the dresses and diamonds.
Scroll on to 2019 and your latest grandson’s wedding, which we watched in Australia while outside, Extinction Rebellion protestors from the leafy suburbs had glued themselves to the main roads. Australian media had been camped around all corners of Old London Town for weeks in a state of giddy excitement, giving second by second updates on what they hadn’t seen. Their disappointment at Meghan’s frock was palpable, maybe an omen.
Consider what’s changed in this long, long time. That’s what we’ve been through. You were the gilded couple, raised in privilege, dutifully keeping face. We were the ragged-arsed kids from t’north going to top universities, gadding about the globe and in gilded retirement bemoaning the lack of these free luxuries for our children.
Let’s make a quick list of what your family and mine have both endured, enjoyed, survived……vaccinations, antibiotics, hormonal birth control, frozen food, North Sea gas come and gone, trimphones, inter-city trains, car bombs, seven day shopping, a media explosion of TV channels, the internet, mobile phones and some of the most immoral and entitled politicians ever known…..our children become grown - ups and then go on to have pain and trouble that we can can’t fix but certainly can worry about. Well, maybe you could pull the odd string, but the strings were getting frayed by the last few years.
I can remember getting a day off school for Winston Churchil’s funeral, and the oddness of the television being on during daytime. Such were the times. I mean, Bridget Murphy in the house next door - a nice semi with a front and back garden, mind you - had nearly died of polio. Those were the days when programmes were only broadcast for an hour or so at lunchtime, then off until five o’clock. Not switched off by choice. Simply, nothing broadcast. And a time when kids in Britain were still dying of polio. Imagine.
I wonder if the kids will get a day off school to wave you off, Liz. Hope so.
We lived such a long time together. You and me, you and 50-odd-million other UK residents. And now the inevitable, welcoming eternal rest shines upon you. The debt we all owe nature.
It may seem impolite, and it’s not intended to, but as a small child I did not have a view of you and yours, positive or negative. Maybe it was a Catholic thing, and maybe the Queen-shaped gap was filled with the Virgin Mary and the Holy Family. When I became a teenager, it became the fashion to be quite rude about royalty, but it was fashionable to take the rip out of all of ‘The Establishment’. So again nothing especially personal intended. There was some hilarious satire though, especially around the time of your eldest’s investiture as Prince of Wales. In my recollection, we never expected you to notice let alone feel hurt by it.
Our telly conked out the very day that your Anne married that sausage magnate’s son. Me and me mam got our raincoats on and went to stand outside the Rediffusion shop. In those days, live broadcasts were played on sets in the window displays of electronics shops, and so we were able to ooh and aah at the dresses and diamonds.
Scroll on to 2019 and your latest grandson’s wedding, which we watched in Australia while outside, Extinction Rebellion protestors from the leafy suburbs had glued themselves to the main roads. Australian media had been camped around all corners of Old London Town for weeks in a state of giddy excitement, giving second by second updates on what they hadn’t seen. Their disappointment at Meghan’s frock was palpable, maybe an omen.
Consider what’s changed in this long, long time. That’s what we’ve been through. You were the gilded couple, raised in privilege, dutifully keeping face. We were the ragged-arsed kids from t’north going to top universities, gadding about the globe and in gilded retirement bemoaning the lack of these free luxuries for our children.
Let’s make a quick list of what your family and mine have both endured, enjoyed, survived……vaccinations, antibiotics, hormonal birth control, frozen food, North Sea gas come and gone, trimphones, inter-city trains, car bombs, seven day shopping, a media explosion of TV channels, the internet, mobile phones and some of the most immoral and entitled politicians ever known…..our children become grown - ups and then go on to have pain and trouble that we can can’t fix but certainly can worry about. Well, maybe you could pull the odd string, but the strings were getting frayed by the last few years.
I can remember getting a day off school for Winston Churchil’s funeral, and the oddness of the television being on during daytime. Such were the times. I mean, Bridget Murphy in the house next door - a nice semi with a front and back garden, mind you - had nearly died of polio. Those were the days when programmes were only broadcast for an hour or so at lunchtime, then off until five o’clock. Not switched off by choice. Simply, nothing broadcast. And a time when kids in Britain were still dying of polio. Imagine.
I wonder if the kids will get a day off school to wave you off, Liz. Hope so.