Mourning Has Broken

 by Simon Lemieux

So, here we all are, the period of official mourning for her late majesty Queen Elizabeth II has passed, a new day is dawning. A new Caroline era perhaps, and the question remains, how was it for you? War in Ukraine still rages, the energy crisis still remains, floods still devastate parts of Pakistan, and public exams are still on for summer 2023 – sorry Y11 and Y13! And yet, and yet, something has changed even while the earth has not spun off its axis and the world goes about its merry (and not so merry) business. I half thought I really don’t want to add to the reams of reflection, recollection and royalist (and some dissenting republican) outpourings over the last week and a bit. Do I have really anything to add that hasn’t been said? Probably not, but I’ll give it a go. Just to lay my cards on the table, I self-identify as a pragmatic monarchist. The notion of inherited privilege and power, the quirks of genetically created fate, all leave me somewhat cold. Monarchy in the 21^st century is outmoded, outdated and shouldn’t have a place in a modern liberal democracy. Yet on balance, thank God it does. On balance, because the alternatives are far worse, and worser, unBritish. An elected presidency sounds attractive, it works in other lands, but think who it might attract in the UK; President Blair anyone? No, I thought not.

Give a president real power, and you set the country up for gridlock, look across the pond. Make them purely ceremonial and quite what is the point of electing them? You may as well vote for a Police and Crime Commissioner, which, on the whole, we don’t. so, we are lumbered with the Windsors/Saxe-Coburg-Gothas/Mountbattens, and they with us. They, keep the drama/soap opera alive opening buildings already built, exercising soft diplomacy on behalf of the nation and maintaining a degree of accessibility and vulnerability. Yet exuding that mystical charm and aura that goes beyond mere celebrity status. They opine on everything while giving little away. Soft talk is their speciality, necessarily so. They fail to pronounce on Brexit, NHS funding, teachers’ pay or even their favourite football team. Their gilded cage lets little escape, and thus it must be if our divisions are not deepened and succour denied to strife; we leave all that to our angry politicians.

But I began by asking, how was it for you; for myself in true teacher style, they are WWW – ‘What Went Well’ and EBI ‘Even Better If’.

WWW

1. No one does ceremony and dignified ritual better than us Brits. ‘Twas not always thus, but the imperial age of Queen Victoria saw us perfect the art of seamlessly blending sacred pomp with military precision and timing. While dictatorships have military might on display, a show of brute force, think soviet-style May Day parades for one, we have the militarily redundant bearskin and bright red jackets of the Guards, with trumpeters aplenty. We have the rites and ceremonies of the established Church of England centre stage in a grand ecclesiastical backdrop, Westminster Abbey, but eschew doctrinal conformity. The ceremony is rightly and properly Christian yet hardly the church militant in the misunderstood meaning of the term. Our pageantry is grand yet gentle, impressive without imposing, and above all it conveys an authenticity honed by history and tradition.

2. The assemblage of personages at the funeral service. Truly A list, and probably not to be repeated in my lifetime. No country of repute dared send its 2^nd XI, or Vice President in the case of the US. This was the equivalent in pop/rock music terms to Live Aid and Woodstock combined. If you weren’t there, it was pretty much because you weren’t invited, for which read, your leader’s link to the civilised world is tenuous at best.

3. I can’t help but be impressed by the record of unbroken public service undertaken by the Queen. Tedious often, uncomfortable at times – what did the Queen really think of President Trump and having to host him? Remember, she doesn’t draw up the guest list for state banquets. It’s a bit like having a grand 18th birthday party where your parents draw up the guest list. Year in year out, she did the government’s bidding meeting potentates and presidents and scarcely put a foot wrong. Even the occasional misjudgement such as her initial decision to remain at Balmoral in the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death, ‘Show us you care Ma’am’ can be read as an exercise in caution and tact. If she had been coptered down to Buckingham Palace the day after, what are the chances of her being labelled by the tabloid press as a hypocrite after good publicity? On occasions with the Fourth Estate, you can’t win.

 

For what it’s worth, having lived through that event, I wasn’t aware I was ‘suffering’ nor have I suffered from PTSD thereafter. Yes, her devotion to public service came alongside wealth, privilege and a wide choice of mansions, but then she couldn’t really escape from it all and go on a foreign break like ‘normal folk’. Not sure I’d want to spend every summer up in Balmoral personally. More impressively, she couldn’t/didn’t retire. Surely the temptation to put up one’s regal feet must have been, well tempting especially after the annus reginae horribilis that was 1992 culminating in a devastating fire at Windsor Castle. Even in her final days, and probably far from well, she bade vale to Boris Johnson and ave to Liz Truss. It’s almost as if she was hanging on deliberately. I sensed the same when my own mother, not far off the Queen’s age, and also pretty active till near the end, shuffled off this mortal coil before Covid descended. I don’t think she wanted to hang around for that. I don’t blame her. Those of a great vintage seem almost to have this second sense, you don’t even have to have blue blood…

4. And this leads on to death itself. I found myself in the last few days talking a bit more about death with family and friends; not morbidly but more philosophically perhaps. What is grief, what is dying well? At a BBQ on Saturday, someone was telling me how she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell her young grandson that his aunt/her daughter had been cremated. Apparently, I learned from another friend, when young children hear the word body, they imagine it is headless and can be quite distressed. Language matters, in life and about death. Benjamin Franklin famously quipped that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. Well, a good accountant and overseas tax havens can sometimes enable the latter to be dodged; from the former there is no escape. Blunt but true.

5. Working with young people though brings sentimentality and higher philosophical discourse back to earth with a resounding thud. Enquiring of my tutor group if they had anything they wanted to discuss or ask on that Friday morning, the first question was ‘Will we have a day off for the funeral Sir?’ I made the correct call but warned then that as Y13s now, they would be unlikely to get another day off for the coronation, which would either be in the holidays or after summer 2023. Another teacher from an independent girls’ school (not in Hampshire in case you were speculating) told me how in their official book of condolence, one pupil had written ‘Go Lizzie’. A statement of heartfelt endearment one presumes….

6. As one who generally eschews sugary sentiment and has avoided flying a flag so I can then fly it at half mast or putting tributes up in my front window, I have to say that I’m rather touched that others do. Like the agnostic wondering past a church service, I’m glad others believe: ‘Say one for me vicar’.

7. Smooth succession: calm, swift and decorous. The Queen is dead, long live the King! Any crowds took to the street not to build barricades or march on the Capitol, but to grieve and mourn. We changed head of state and PM within a week without a hitch. It’s almost as if they planned it….

8. The last week and a bit has also made me reflect on why I instinctively appreciate stability and continuity, evolution not revolution. The Queen successfully surfed the winds and waves of great change, not literally though that is an interesting image. Her reign has seen it all: Empire to Commonwealth, global power to European partner to, well who knows where, typewriters to touchscreen laptops and the digital age. And much else besides. She’s always been there, a symbol of continuity. True, her presence had minimal direct impact on my own life though I did get a coin for the 1977 Silver Jubilee I recall. But something, intangible perhaps is missing. We need some stability underpinning our lives. At the risk of sounding like the most cliched child psychologist, there is so often a link between the most troubled children and destabilising family trauma. Continuity is boring perhaps and receives less attention from historians than it probably should, we prefer changes and causation, but it matters and helps; it really does.

9. An extra bank holiday. Come on, if you’ve read this far you were thinking that too, perhaps slightly guiltily?

EBI

But of course, alongside all the positive serious stuff you’ve got the irritating and sometimes quite frankly, humorous dimensions. So here goes……

1. Who opened/stayed shut. Yes, absolutely fine and proper to close many shops and businesses on the day of the funeral to give staff time off to watch the event, but what were Center Parcs thinking off when they initially announced they would turf their customers out of their cabins for that Monday. Seriously?! And what about the explanation for pubs opening later in the day so that as one pub chain put it, "Millions of people across the UK will want to come together in their local pub to celebrate her life, share memories and pay their respects.” No they won’t for the most part; they’ll want to gather to escape the funeral fest on television and social media, or just meet up with mates and boost pub profits. Tell it like it is. And why shut the bookies? Her late majesty enjoyed the turf, and doubtless had the occasional flutter. Give the gambling public a bit of respect. Show us you care Ladbrokes! Okay, maybe not such a bad judgement call in retrospect. And cancelling football matches, kids’ sport etc on that first weekend; what exactly was that all about? Perhaps football spectators aren’t to be trusted with observing a two minute silence which would have been appropriate. Ah yes, that overused phrase ‘Out of respect…’

2. This brings me on to misplaced mourning. Morrisons supermarket turned down the volume on their self-service tills so it was barely audible. I mentioned it to the till supervisor who turned up the volume or so he thought. Nope, his command was overridden by the Morrison equivalent of royal decree I suspect. If there was unidentified object in the bagging area, I would have been none the wiser. Lidl was clearly showing disrespect as their tannoys continued to announce that Till Number 4 is now opening. With the royal family being half German, you would have thought more decorum would have been evident. Or perhaps I do need to know where to offload my groceries on the conveyor belt. Lidl, you have my blessing and more of my business.

3. Which leads on to the fawning emails sent to my inbox expressing deep sorrow at Her Majesty’s passing. Were these from holders of royal warrants, businesses frequented by the consumer habits of the royals? Not exactly, among other digital missives were those from a local brewery, a car rental firm and a go-karting track. Shop displays and adjusted websites are one thing but really……

4. And then there’s the flowers. Again, at a time of personal loss, floral tributes from friends and colleagues are a kind and much appreciated thought. The messages touching and the bouquets sit well in the front room. But, while totally well meant, was the enhanced bonanza for florists really necessary? There’s a large part of me that thinks it would have been better to spend the money on donating to a charity of which Her Majesty would have felt a special bond; the Dogs’ Trust or a fund that helps ex-jockeys, or perhaps flood victims of Pakistan a Commonwealth country. Practical action rather than services to the floral industry, each to their own I guess. I just hope all those flowers make good compost.

5. There’s also the issue of ‘groupthink’ or in this case ‘groupmourning’. I find it interesting to reflect how far our emotions were being manipulated and how far they were being genuinely amplified by the saturation coverage of the Queen’s death in both the press and on television. On Saturday, a republican’s only refuge was Channel 5 which aired the Smurfs and the emoji movie on the Monday of the funeral, among other offerings. Would we have been right to criticise the occasional presenter who might have chosen not to wear a black tie and black suit. Where does decorum and good manners end, and personal choice begin? A little like ‘poppy fascism’ and Remembrance perhaps. How far are we forced by social convention and fear of abuse and denunciation, into practices we might not share in our hearts? Tough one, but there is again that part of me that secretly wishes a paper such as the Guardian for example, might have announced the Queen’s passing as ‘Windsor-based billionaire widow passes away at 96, further details on p8-9’. Perhaps more authentic in terms of many of its readers’ and probably journalists’ sentiment. That said, I didn’t read the Morning Star’s front page that day….

6. Prince Andrew, what can you say… tricky, you can’t leave him out of events, he can’t catch Covid again but his mere presence made one slightly queasy. Living in royal limbo between complete Savile/Harris damnation and the perceived saintliness of other royals, he managed to reassure his many critics with the creepiest father/daughter physical contact. Watch the video, enough said. In a more conventional family, he’d probably have been left at home arranging the sandwiches and chilling the fizz for the post funeral get-together. And then there was Harry and Meghan, slightly higher up the scale of acceptable royalty, but what were they really thinking. Will they re-engage with ‘The Firm’ is a reconciliation beckoning or will the LA celebrity casting continue to weave its allure? As with most family events, EBI if the more wayward members were not present in the first place, but some are safer not disinvited. The 1820 coronation of George IV and the appearance at Westminster Abbey of his deeply estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, is instructive here.

7. All those folk reminiscing about encounters with royalty, how the Queen was waving or smiling at them in particular. Unearthed photos of close encounters with royalty like er the one below….

Okay, guilty as charged.

Targets

So, what’s the way forward? In many ways, our nation has changed except it hasn’t. The old problems and divisions remain. In the days after this unique and frankly somewhat weird disorientating time in our nation’s history, the economy and political realities are fundamentally unchanged. Yet, something or perhaps I should better say someone, who has always been there as a benign presence of continuity and stability is no more. I guess, the Queen’s own words to NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern we should ‘Just get on with it’.

We have a coronation to look forward to, coronation chicken low fat perhaps. We shall wait and see.

Lastly, these last few days have, admittedly occasionally, caused me to ponder and think quite what it means to be British in the 21st century. So much of the pomp and ceremony feels outdated, a relic of a bygone imperial day. A period drama perhaps, enjoyable to watch but out of kilter with how we really live today. Perhaps the best I can manage is to say that for myself at least, national identity in part is not taking life and hierarchy too seriously. Being free and able to write an article that is slightly irreverent perhaps, seeing beyond certain facades, yet remaining good-natured and not unkind or cruel. And knowing, that if I have got it wrong, I will neither be vilified or sent to a dark damp cell or gulag. Or so I hope…..