Not On My To-Do List

          I had better get it off my chest: I am not mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II. She may have done a “good job” as Head of State, but that assessment is as vague as the appointment process is arbitrary. There is no possible justification for a monarch inheriting a position that their distant forbears grabbed by force. And not all the Queen’s subjects think of her fondly. As one teenager commented when asked her opinion by a reporter, “It’s sad that she died, like, but she never did nothing for us.” Moreover, half-way through ten days of official mourning, I am aghast at the extent of the no-(public)-expense spared, fancy-dress ceremonies endlessly unfolding. Some people will not be complaining – florists and costumiers, for example. They will be able to use their excess profits to pay their electricity bills next month.

         Then there’s the dereliction of duty shown by a government whose absence of presence all through summer is now extended until after the funeral. If she were a true patriot, our newly installed Prime Minister might step up and sort out the mess, but I suspect she is sulking, miffed at having had her limelight stolen

          But concerned as I am about wasteful, delusional pomp and the lassitude of government, I am more worried by the latent threat to our right to dissent. Some of those who have been brave enough to swim publicly against the tide of popular sentiment have been booed, abused and even threatened with arrest for “disturbing the peace”. Calls for the abolition of monarchy are viewed as unpatriotic, but patriotism, famously referred to by Dr Johnson as, “the last resort of a scoundrel”, is all too often deliberately mis-defined (e.g., by Putin). The true patriot, “is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies” *, a more balanced definition of love for one’s country. The fact that filing respectfully past the Queen’s coffin is not on my to-do list makes me no less patriotic than the most fervent royalist.

          What is on my to-do list is, in reality, quite mundane, rather like the one I found the other day on a path, where it had been dropped. It is written on the actual back of an actual envelope (just like the Government’s policies). It reads thus:

WEDS

Clean J + F’s toys + bathroom

Clean Washing mach + Dishwasher

Penny – date

Prue – date

Email Eric

Caroline’s email

Sue (phone number, redacted)

          From these scraps of information, I have imagined a character – a young woman, married, with children and an active social life. She seems overly concerned with cleaning, but the bold, elegant hand tells me she’s artistic, educated and a late adopter of notebook apps. Then again, my certainty that they are a ‘she’ is somewhat undermined by one thing in particular: no woman of my acquaintance has ever shown interest in cleaning the machines that clean stuff. Surely, that falls into the category of ‘maintenance’, which is more often associated with blokes? So perhaps they aren’t married – at least, not to a bloke who does maintenance – and they live alone with two kids and some grubby toys. They are somewhat obsessive about hygiene – on Wednesdays, at least – but I would need to see Thursday’s list to get a more balanced picture. I do have the option of calling Sue to see whether she can shed some light, but I realise that would be creepy and could land me in trouble, so the question remains open: is she/he/they a republican with whom I could share a pint or a monarchist who would grass me up to the police, to be handed over to the custody of Black Rod or some such other costumed relic of medieval feudalism empowered by King Charles to lock me up in the Tower of London?

* Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986)