My first grandson has been born
within a few minutes or at the most hours of the death of Queen Elizabeth the
Second (on September 8th). He is now a Carolingian rather than
an Elizabethan. It seems very strange to be singing God Save the King,
but we will get used to it.
The late Spring and early Summer
both passed with wonderful weather, and a new record high temperature in the UK
of over 40 degrees C, somewhere in Lincolnshire. A drought was officially
declared in many places, particularly the South of England. The grave and
the trivial have existed side by side. How else can one write in one
catch-up diary entry of the death of a monarch who has steadfastly been
the rock at the centre of our Nation’s life, and a petulant lawsuit between two
footballer’s wives? If this diary were
unfolding sequentially, such matters might perhaps be excusable (HMQ died in
the afternoon of September 8th), but most gossip becomes somehow
irrelevant now.
What I will say is that there is
an enormous contrast between many of the utterances of Prince Charles (as he
was) and King Charles III (as he now is).
The sincerity, the gravitas, the perfect phrasing, the lack of those
characteristics so ably imitated by Rory Bremner and other mimics, seem to mark
out a new era in Charles’s communications with our nation.
‘Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so
shall the world perceive, That I have turned away my former self; So will I
those that kept me company.’ (Henry IV part 2)
I will try to catch up with some
of the highlights between these dates above.
May 2, 2022
Woken at first light by
helicopters overhead. They are searching
for a missing person. A post-sailing
regatta party resulted in some lads taking a RIB (rigid inflatable boat) for a
spin in the middle of the night, and rumour has it they hit a cardinal mark in
the harbour at high speed. Some days
later a body is found.
Fine and increasingly hot weather brings a drought to the southern part of the UK.
We first become aware of the rising temperatures on our first overseas holiday for two and a half years. Alighting from the Poole – Cherbourg ferry on May 15th, temperature much as in the UK – a comfortable 20 degrees, but suddenly, stopping just outside Le Mans, it is 29 degrees. The Brittany Ferries brochure is full of advertisements for alcohol but in the interstices are some articles to encourage visits to this part of France. Le Mans, for instance, is praised for its ‘competitive spirit’ but is worth visiting as the birthplace of the most famous of the Plantagenet Kings, Henry II. The guide also attempts to tantalise with recipes such as ‘Far Breton’ – with ingredients such as brandy, sugar, prunes, raisins, milk, eggs, flour, and butter, there surely isn’t much that could go wrong with this?
Our first stop is the Loire and
the riverside town of Langeais, a little west of Tours. The cycling here is largely level, apart from
the challenging cliffs above the town of Chinon, high above the Vienne, a
tributary of the Loire. High
temperatures and cycling mean rehydration with cold (Belgian) beer. Chinon is famous for its literary son, François
Rabelais, the French renaissance writer, as well as associations with Joan of
Arc, and the birthplace of Richard the Lionheart.
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| The fortress of Chinon |
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| Fine food in Langeais |
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| Au Coin des Halles |
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| The Chateau, Langeais |
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| A meeting with Rabelais |
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| Rehydration in Avoine |
Moving further south, we have a
night of luxury in a restored farmhouse in Perigord, before visiting family in
Monségur, near the Dordogne. By this
time the temperatures are in the high 30s and cycling is only possible in the
shade of trees by the river path. A
visit to Bergerac brings one face to face, or perhaps nose to nose with the
eponymous Cyrano.
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| A secret corner of Perigord |
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| Nose to nose with Cyrano |
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| 38 degrees in Bergerac |
A three-year absence of trips to
France reminds us powerfully how much we love so many aspects of the
country. It also reminds us of the
French waiter’s stock response to a customer awaiting tardy service: ‘J’arrive.’ Translated as – ‘Sometime in the next hour.’
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| Dawdling in France |
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| Kouign-Amman, a Breton cake, much like a croissant, but with lots of sugar mixed in. Very welcome to cyclists |
Returning home, we are determined
to fit more holidays in, and within a few weeks we take a walking holiday in
Umbria, visiting some of the less well known corners of the Apennine foothills,
though also visiting Assisi. My last
visit to Assisi was in 1958 with my parents.
My mother bought a decorative tile with a picture of St Francis blessing
the animals, and an inscription in French:
‘Que le bon Dieu/ Te regarde, te benisse/Et tourne son visage vers
toi.’
It hung in our kitchen for many
years. But the religious memorabilia
available now seems trite and trashy, and is probably made in China, much like
Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ baseball caps.
And a further trip to Italy to
play a 4-year delayed social golfing event against European and U.S.
cardiologists is fitted in before returning to ‘face the music’, so to speak,
for a Robotic Assisted Radical Prostatectomy on 29th June.
These holidays serve to take the
prospect of forthcoming cancer surgery out of one’s thoughts. The few days after returning home remind me
of Brutus in ‘Julius Caesar’, and the abhorrence of delay between thought and
action: ‘Between the acting of a dreadful thing /And the first motion, all the
interim is /Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. /The genius and the mortal
instruments /Are then in council, and the state of man, /Like to a little
kingdom, suffers then /The nature of an insurrection.’
Recovery is delayed and
complicated, but somewhat alleviated by some wonderful sport on TV. Wimbledon, Test Match cricket, and especially
the Tour de France. One of the best and
most exciting Tours of recent memory, commencing with hugely enthusiastic
Danish crowds lauding one of their own, Magnus Cort, as he gained the ‘King of
the Mountains’ title during the first three days parcours. (There are no mountains in Denmark, I hear
you say). Over the succeeding three
weeks, a magnificent duel between the two clear strongest competitors
evolves. Eventually Le Tour is won by Jonas
Vingegaard (Denmark), from Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia).
A remarkable sporting gesture
happened near the end of the race.
Pogačar, desperate to gain time on Vingegaard, took a descending corner
too wide, slid on gravel and ended up in the ditch. At first Vingegaard stormed ahead, but
realising that his arch-competitor had experienced some bad luck, slowed until
Pogačar righted himself and caught up. A
touch of hands in a high-speed handshake acknowledged the debt owed by Pogačar,
and the sporting rivalry continued.
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| One of the greatest ever sporting gestures, akin to Jack Nicklaus giving Tony Jacklin that putt in the 1969 Ryder Cup (acknowledgements to whoever posterised the still from the race |
Sadly, other events continued as
before. The war in Ukraine
continued. As I write, late in
September, there has been a remarkable turnaround, with Putin’s forces in
retreat; many of his most formidable weapons trumped by modern technology –
portable anti-tank launchers, for example.
In May, there was yet another mass shooting in the USA – in a Texas
school – 19 deaths. A friend died from
an unpleasant form of facial cancer. A
great outdoorsman, his funeral was a wonderful celebration of his love of
sailing, walking, climbing, and cycling.
The final touch? ‘The Manchester
Rambler’ by Ewan MacColl.
On 12th August,
another U.S. based incident. Salman
Rushdie, for many years under a Fatwa
from Iran due to his authorship of ‘The Satanic Verses’, which it seems that
the Ayatollah failed to read before condemning it, is attacked in Chautauqua,
New York, while giving a lecture.
Despite multiple stab wounds, Rushdie is fortunate to survive. The Fatwa situation is a Catch-22 one: the
only person who can rescind the issuance of this is the person who originally
invoked it. Unfortunately, Ayatollah
Khomeini cannot do this – he is dead.
But all other news, gossip, or
opinion fades before the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. The national response of mourning, tributes,
and ceremony is remarkable. Huge queues
of citizens, first in Edinburgh’s St Giles cathedral, and now in Westminster
Hall, to walk past the coffin, indicate the depth of love and respect that we
have for the monarch, who dedicated over 70 years of her life to the duties of
a Queen.
The period of mourning that we
are now in is enlivened by some examples of Her Majesty’s humour: an interview
with the artist who painted the last official portrait for example. The Queen asked him who his favourite portrait
artists were. ‘Oh, Gainsborough and
Reynolds,’ came the reply. ‘I think,’
replied Her Majesty, ‘We have a few of those downstairs.’
The BBC has done a remarkable job
during the period leading up to the funeral.
Interviews with virtually anybody who ever met the Queen can pall,
however. I was intrigued by an interview
with John Kerry, the Presidential envoy for Climate. He spoke of his remembrance of the Queen
being ‘coronated’. I was tempted to
assume that he couldn’t speak the Queen’s English, and should have used the
more usual ‘crowned’, or spoken of the ‘coronation.’ Of course it was an American who said that
‘There is no noun that cannot be verbed.’
But then I remembered that some Americans – chiefly in the remote
outposts of the Appalachians, still use some of the English of 400 years
ago. Indeed, ‘coronated’ has been extant
since 1623. Mountain folk use antiquated
words like ‘britches, (breeches, trousers); ‘poke’ (bag); and ‘settle’ for
‘sofa’, and will ask you to ‘set that down’ rather than ‘put that down.’
Letters to the papers are
poignant, and interesting. One elderly
man who was present as a child as the Queen’s Coronation Coach drove along the
Mall in 1953, remarked what a sad sign of the times it was that then the
policemen were all facing the coach – now they are all facing the crowd.
The Queen’s funeral was a
magnificent affair. A solemn and
reverential ceremony in Westminster Abbey, followed by a march to the
Wellington Arch near Buckingham Palace, transferring by hearse to Windsor
Castle for a more intimate ceremony in St George’s Chapel. At the point where the military parade
reached the palace the commentator observed that the procession (the coffin
borne on a gun carriage) was now one and a quarter miles long. History was made at every step. The last Royal funeral held in Westminster
Abbey was that of George II in 1760.
Some of the music has been sung at such events for several hundred
years. But it seems that it is
impossible to please everyone. Sir James
MacMillan (a Scot), who composed a choral piece entitled ‘Who Shall Separate
Us’, has received hate mail and complaints from Scottish Nationalists who saw
in the work a subliminal message in favour of the Union between our
countries. As Sir James explains, the
title refers to a passage from the Bible which was a favourite of the late
Queen, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
And immediately following the
obsequies, the railway workers have announced a recurrence of their strike
action (for more pay), threatening the London Marathon, and creating travel
misery for thousands. Another letter in
the papers reads thus:
‘Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union
Congress claims that the right to strike is a fundamental British liberty.
Not so: it is an innovation arising out of legislation in
1871. Then, working conditions were
utterly different: employers held a whip hand over their workers. In current conditions, it seems wrong that
one group should aim, without penalty, to better itself by imposing hardship on
others.’
Agreed.
I am sure that so many of us were
taken aback by the suddenness of the Queen’s last illness. Only two days before she had welcomed Boris
Johnson who attended at Balmoral to resign as Prime Minister, and a short time
later, Liz Truss, who attended to be asked to become Prime Minister. Photographs of her show her smiling, looking
frail, but still in full control. You
may wonder why I did not mention the Prime Ministerial race before? Do not fret.
‘It is a tale. Told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.’
More Shakespeare. He has been much in vogue in the last
weeks. King Charles quoted from the
final scene of Hamlet about his mother; ‘Flights
of angels sing thee to thy rest.’ I
seem to recall that it was originally ‘hymn thee to thy rest’, but I can’t find
it anywhere. Perhaps it was in the First
Quarto?
An article by Dominic Cavendish
in the Telegraph (September 17) is entitled ‘Why We Find Solace in
Shakespeare’, and mentions another bon mot from Charles, who quotes Shakespeare’s
Henry VIII; the blessing of Elizabeth I. Cranmer saying, ‘She shall be… a pattern to all princes.’ I commend the article.
Some counterpoise to recent
events is given by the TV series, ‘The Crown’, and we are not caught up with
the most recent episodes. We have moved
through the late 70s, and are now in the 80s, with the excruciating goings-on
in the Charles/Diana/Camilla triangle (or pentagon if you choose to include
Princess Anne and Andrew Parker Bowles).
It is a salutary reminder that none of us is perfect, but may explain
why some of my era have a certain ambivalence about the transfer of the
monarchy, which does not extend to full-blooded Republicanism, but may we
remain aloof, awhile?
Let us hope. Back, almost, where I began:
‘Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so
shall the world perceive, That I have turned away my former self; So will I
those that kept me company.’ (Henry IV part 2)
So long Falstaff…
The ER insignia at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Blacked out at the performance of Don Giovanni on September 13th
