This post will be about several things, but it won't be about The Queue. I don't need to explain that any further, you know it the one I mean, the one that has dominated the national conversation to a perplexing degree over the last few days.
I knew when HRH popped her little bejewelled clogs that I was going to be out of step with the majority if my fellow countrymen. Not so much due to my lack of support for the monarchy, though that's definitely a factor, but more due to my distaste for greetings card sentiment. And, dear me, but we've had that in spades.
Grieving, I understand. Grief and I, as longer term readers may recall, are well acquainted. And I'm not so arrogant as to tell others how to grieve; but it does seem, from the perspective of one utterly unmoved by the death of someone I didn't know, that we as a country are...enjoying this a little too much? Wallowing a little?
I do understand it, to a degree. Brenda represents one of the last links to when we were a country of note, for the vast majority of us she's the only monarch we've ever known, and even if you, like me, think the whole idea of monarchy is insulting, bootlicking nonsense, her death is still a major change to the status quo. So it's not a surprise that the country's gone a little bit nuts. But it has taken some unusual forms.
The Paddington thing, for example. We possibly should have seen this one coming, Liz's two-hander with the Peruvian shortarse was a canny bit of PR, allowing just enough whimsy into the brand to revive it after the ignominy of the Andrew debacle (and while we're on the subject of him, his crawling out from whatever rock he's been under has been one of the less edifying aspects of this current episode of The Crown). But...Paddington as Charon, leading her into the Underworld? Is...is he dead too? Will there be kids dressed in blue duffel coats this Hallowe'en?
Still, as I have observed before, it could have been worse, it could have been Minions.
Likewise, there's been a lot of twee stuff about her reuniting with Philip, all of which rather ignores the shagging around Phil allegedly did when in corporeal form. Possibly she wouldn't be all that pleased to see him. But the collective we needs that sense of closure, the husband and wife together again. These are the stories we love to tell ourselves about ourselves, the romanticised, idealised version of a Forever England, where the Royal Family is kind and wise, and in no sense is Andy a nonce and Wills cheats on Kate because he can't persuade her to peg him.
The other grim aspect has been it being used for a bout of Meghan-bashing, about which the less said the better. Unhinged.
And while I'm studiously avoiding discussion of The Queue, I will note that it has taken a life beyond its original form, already becoming a myth, not about HRH, but about the British themselves. Richard Curtis is 100% writing a romcom about it already, Ian McEwen a state of the nation novel. A tale of a plucky Island nation which likes to make up heartwarming stories about itself because it's having a collective nervous breakdown in the face of a wildly uncertain future.
Okay, maybe I am talking about The Queue then. Damn, I'd rather hoped to have avoided it.
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