Nonsense meets pantomime.

by Pseud O'Nym

You know how sometimes you have a feeling when after you’ve seen something and you just feel sullied by the mere fact of bearing witness to it? That in some unknowable way you’ve betrayed yourself, have let yourself down, are less of a person. I had thankfully never encountered that feeling before. I can’t write that now.

I am currently in Southwold with my partner and her 92 year old mother, ostensibly to have a break by the sea, but specifically so her mum could watch the coronation on a big TV and generally be made a fuss of. This was her third coronation and because her mum has hearing problems, was oblivious to my less than forelock tugging directors commentary.

And there was a lot to be less than forelock tugging over. Where to start? There was just so much ridiculousness to chose from. The very idea of a supposedly forward looking, notionally egalitarian nation still having a monarchy for starts. And that nation more than happily closing off some of its capital city so a a bloke could sit on a chair, put on a hat that even Liberace would baulk at, and all the time wear a pained expression on his face, rather like that of someone whose trying to hold in a really large fart. That would be the same bloke who constantly bangs on about how modern Britain is now multi-cultural and therefore multi-faith, but see’s nothing hypocritical whatsoever in being crowned defender of a faith that most people don’t share. A faith moreover that was explicitly created by one of his predecessors so he could get a divorce.

And a faith, which like them all, reinforces the notion of a higher power, that we are merely their humble servants and our duty is to pledge allegiance to it. In the 21st Century? I mean if the higher power were money or fame, fine, I’d buy that. But an invisible being like Santa? Except that you get presents when you’re alive with Santa, you don’t have to die first. And writing of death I’ve not seen people move so slowly since I helped out at an old peoples home back in my 6th Form days. The whole ceremony could’ve been over in a fraction of the time if people faster than asthmatic geriatrics, there’d been much less singing and less pot pourri. Or poo pourri. Or was it popery her mum was harrumphing about? One of them anyways.

But enough of that, ‘The Big Country’ is on the telly, Leech and Mackay have just had their fight and there’s the duel between McKay and Hennessey over Jean Simmons soon. Epic.Timeless. Proper majesty.