Jubilee final day

Tuesday 5^th June 2012

Have spent almost all day spread out on the sofa in my pyjamas, only getting up to feed the cat and the birds. I never usually do this unless I have a really bad cold. Even when I was having chemo I always managed to get dressed in the morning. The Queen has turned me into a slob.

I was pleased to receive this message from a friend in Chicago:

“Have been having a very good time watching the Jubilee, particularly as the British people are enjoying themselves so much and seemingly feeling at home in their own skins despite decades of PC social engineering trying to effect the contrary.”

It’s quite moving to see the crowds on TV, so jubilant despite the wet. The Mall looks like an Impressionist painting, with a great mass all pinks and greens with threads of blue.

I am even catching up with a repeat of the concert which I missed last night.  It sounded like a lot of good natured but excruciating acts, egotistical outpourings so diametrically opposed to anything that the Queen represents.

Robbie Williams introduced it, waddling about the stage like a cross between Norman Wisdom and Little Richard. His movements are strangely erotic, but it seems he has no voice which is rather a let down. In the end he provides a poor pastiche of Sinatra.

A lot of old faces are there ready to parody themselves, but happily no sign of   Engelbert, Steven Cowell or the normally ubiquitous Stephen Fry.  It was a bit worrying that  there are a few guests I’ve never heard of. Who exactly is Gary Barlow?

I will stick with it until Rolf Harris comes on with his wobble-board.  He is sure to be there as like the Queen he has recently started to become a cult figure.

Madness were best, even though they sang an old song they managed to be funny and interesting, or at least the lighting engineers did, opening up Buckingham Palace like Queen Mary’s doll’s house, and sometimes turning it into a simple terraced house.

The Queen arrives  wearing a long cloak  similar to the one she wore when she was painted by Annigoni in 1969. Perhaps she goes flapping around in it a lot, much more theatrical than one would have thought.

I know that many republicans out there think that the utterly dim British public has been hoodwinked by the evil “meedja” into coming out in force to support the Queen’s Jubilee, as if they’ve been herded into the streets and forced to smile and wave their little flags. They’ll dismiss it all as “bread and circuses,” but I think this outburst of enthusiasm has put paid to their miserable, boring agenda for awhile.

It’s still out there though  – the struggle between fun-loving Cavaliers still proud to be Brits and pious  Roundheads who insist that Britain and particularly the English part of it an immoral concept which happily no longer exists.