If there are people still resisting Covid vaccination, you don’t hear much about it these days. And, despite the World Health Organisation last week declaring the emergency to be over, I received an email soon afterwards inviting me to go for the latest booster. I opted for a local walk-in centre in preference to the comparatively tedious alternative of going online to book a timed slot. I wasn’t the only one. When I arrived at the makeshift facility, it was more a queue-up than a walk-in. I joined a line of fellow pensioners snaking out of the door, anxiously calculating whether we could hold out until a visit to the toilet became imperative. Still, the NHS staff were friendly, cheerful and efficient and the whole affair was refreshingly free of face-masks and the accompanying air of doom that had imbued the first sessions back in February 2021. Everything was back to normal.
The next day was the coronation of King Charles the umpteenth and, though it failed to ignite a patriotic fire in my breast, I couldn’t resist a bit of daytime telly while doing the housework. Consequently, I saw some strange behaviour (a female MP holding up a long sword in front of her face?) and some excessively fancy outfits. And, although there was some rather good music, I stood agape as the Protestant bishops did their unconvincing best to tie the authority of the Monarch to that of their God and thereby impose a form of theistic authority on a population that is no longer majority-religious. Meanwhile, outside the Abbey, 64 people were arrested for planning a protest against this absurd imposition. In the days that followed, a swell of indignation began to make it look as if the government’s heavy-handed Section 14 legislation, which was originally aimed at “eco-crusaders turned criminals” *, had backfired and was now being used to prevent ‘respectable’ people from publicly expressing their opinions on other matters. Even the Metropolitan Police were embarrassed.
As was I, to some extent when, the following day, having deliberately not signed up to the residents’ lunch-time garden party organised around bringing and sharing food under strings of union jack flags, I found it was still going strong in the early evening when I returned from an alternative, anti-celebratory, vegan barbecue. My by-then well-oiled neighbours insisted I join them for a drink and, despite their suspicions of my left-leaning politics, were jovial and friendly – those few I engaged with – and one of them, discovering we shared a love of jazz, dropped all conversation about monarchy and turned instead to a plan to start our own jazz appreciation society. I suggested that the first session might feature a few monarchs of the genre – Nat King Cole, King Curtis, King Fleming, King of the Clarinet: Artie Shaw, King of the Jazz Guitar: Django Reinhardt, King of Swing: Benny Goodman and a few Dukes and Earls for back-up – and the irony was not lost on him. We should get along fine.
As an antidote to flag-waving and controversy, I spent the next two days, with my Other Half, hiking in the pretty countryside around Dartmouth. Although we got rain-soaked, there were sunny intervals, the most memorable of which shone down on a deep-green, grassy hillside carpeted with a sublime mixture of bluebells and buttercups. The colour palette was so spectacular it easily shamed the tawdry attempt of Westminster’s finest to impress us with their artificial splendour.
Before heading home, we mooched around the pretty estuary town of Kingsbridge (there’s no escaping our heritage), where I overheard two women talking. “How’s John?”, said one. “He’s fine. Just had his hips done, now he’s waiting for an operation on his back,” replied the other in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, as if it was completely routine. After all, God is in Heaven and His anointed King sits on the throne. Everything is back to normal.
* Priti Patel, when Home Secretary in 2020.
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