Books

Saturday 2 June 2012

Jubilee! Jubilee!

Jubilee, Jubilee!



I never used to be a Royalist, thinking that it was wrong for people to have publically bestowed / funded privileges above others simply by luck / bad luck (depending how you look at it) of their birth. But then I went to London…



Yes, I’d been to London before – I fed the pigeons aged about eight and had a fantastic ice cream. I think I went with a school trip to the war museum as a mid-teenager, and had a great time arsing about on the underground, but then I went as a grown-up.



I walked around the sights, and finally worked out how it all fitted together. I walked from Buckingham Palace, past the horse guards, along the river and to the Tower, and was completely blown away by it all. I finally realised how lucky we are in Britain to have such a fantastic heritage and I was willing to sacrifice a few million of my personal hard-earned taxes to pay for it.



I went to New Zealand not long after and was advised by an enthusiastic Kiwi that I simply had to go and see New Zealand’s oldest house. It had been built circa 1875 and was wrapped up in cotton wool, so important was it to the inhabitants. I brushed off the offer (a little brusquely in hind-sight now that I appreciate more how important it was for them) telling them that my own pad was about twenty-five years older and that the oldest house I’d been in was one in darkest Radnorshire that had parts (the wallpaper for certain) dating back to the 1400s.



So although I like to be scathing about many things requiring national enjoyment, I am going to embrace the Jubilee!  I am going to dress like the queen for the Dress Like the Queen Competition, I will have my photo taken next to her cardboard cut-out, I am going to scoff Victoria Sandwiches as if they are going out of fashion, and I will swig lager with a dash of gin just to get myself into character.



Most people would be jacked off with a job that they’d done for 60 years -try working in a local government planning department for that amount of time, for example.



So have a good Jubilee celebration all! Throw that wellie, tug that tug of war, bake that cake and have a fight round the back of the beer tent: it’s just what we Brits do best.


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