Long time no blog

Récent events - end of Boris Johnson, beginning of Liz Truss, loss of the Queen - have largely left me without much comment to make. However I will note the following : 

We met the Queen once when she came to open the Flintshire Bridge on a damp and overcast day around 1998. Catrin was a babe in arms. Pat was working at a day hospital and they decided to take the patients down to see the Queen arrive at the civic centre in Connah’s Quay for lunch. I went down with Catrin for moral support. We were stood, or seated in wheelchairs, at the corner of the square. The Queen’s car arrived and she got out. Immediately she scanned the scene and, as soon as she could, she made a beeline straight for us to chat with the patients. It was brief, it was small-talk. We thanked her for coming and talked about how we hoped the bridge would help reduce traffic through the town centre (it didn’t) and she said how much she appreciated coming to open something useful. 

One friend from years ago got a job as a footman at Buckingham Palace. He saw that the royal household was recruiting from inner city council estates. He lived in a small village in the Home Counties, but he applied anyway and got in. After a sheltered and modest upbringing; he had a lot to learn - for example how to distinguish different types of drinks! 

Another friend saw a job advertised as one of the housekeepers at Buckingham Palace and applied. She enjoyed the interview and was given the job, but based at Windsor Castle. She got a super little apartment in one of the towers of the castle and enjoyed her work very much. One of her duties, apparently, was to lurk outside the Queen’s sitting room and, whenever she left the room for any reason, to rush in and plump up the cushions. I thought how irritating I would find it to get the cushions just as I wanted them only to find that someone tidied and plumped them all up whenever I ‘cough cough’ left the room for any reason.

Both said that after a couple of years the royal routine was terribly monotonous. Both worked for the queen for a few years, but then were happy to stop. The Queen, of course, had to embrace the monotony and function within it.

We were so glad of the Queen’s open testimony each Christmas. We would always listen. Here in France it would be at 4pm, just the right time for a drink and some cake, and we delighted to watch the reactions of our friends from all over the world as the Queen spoke of the Saviour with the power to forgive, and so on. 

I am personally astonished at the ordeal that her children are having to bear as they take part in ceremony after ceremony, in the public eye, each move being filmed. I would be traumatized. I so hope that after the State funeral they can take some time to quietly catch up with themselves and hide away.

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