Festivals and pageants on the river Thames have always been used as a means to celebrate,after all the Thames is in a manner of speaking what London is all about. The same can be said for the Monarchy and in particular our Queen,she is loved, and sometimes hated by her people though they never hate her for long because above all they know that she truly does love her people,every last one of them.
I have heard it said that the Queen knows nothing about how her poorer subjects live and this is almost certainly true but let us reverse the question. What do any of us know about how it feels to put the needs and feelings of a whole nation before your own private wishes time and time again? Quite simply we now nothing,we have choices which the Royals do not,they are not free as we are to say “Oh to hell with it.” For them there is always duty, duty to the country and its people and the queen always puts country first.
I was born in Coronation year ,in fact my family almost called me Elizabeth,thank heaven they changed their minds! I remember the Silver Jubilee and of course the Golden Jubilee too. I am not one of those types who slavishly follow all the doings of the Royals good or bad but I do believe in giving credit where credit is due.
The Queen may seem distant, solemn, she has enough on her shoulder to make her so, but take a look at her smile and you will see once more the little girl Lillibet a little girl trying not to laugh in the wrong place.
Like the rest of us she makes mistakes and of course every one remembers the way she behaved over the death of Princess Diana, I do not pretend to understand what was in her mind at the time, no one could second guess such a thing. She may well have been right to put the young princess first and I think that in the whole of her reign that was the only occasion when she actually put her family before her duty ,she was to pay dearly for doing so. Temporary loss of popularity made her an easy target for the ambitious Mr Blair.
Savaged by the press, hounded buy her Prime minister and vilified by her people she made the only possible choice and brought he princes back to London. Speaking for myself I did not need to see those boys,one of whom is the same age as my son fighting back the tears they knew that they must not shed in public,but that public wanted its pound of flesh and insisted on seeing the children’s suffering at first hand. How callous and how cruel.
The following year the Queen paid for her (mistake) in the loss of the Royal Yacht Britannia, as vicious and nasty a piece of vengeance as ever a government took upon its Monarch and all done to make Tony Blair seem to be in touch with the people, “the peoples champion.”
I have said before that I am not a die hard Monarchist and it must be faced that this particular royal family is more German that British,but in a world where governments and regimes change constantly this Lady is our link with our history and we forget the lessons of the past at our peril.
London has always loved a party and today we really do have something to celebrate so I shall shout “God Save The Queen” as loud as anyone...and mean it too!
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