This four day jubilee celebration is exhausting. Street parties tomorrow, so today I just hung back from the need to do things. There’s a car boot sale in Battersea. I’m gonna get a pitch and take loads of stuff there next Sunday, and flog it. Gets the stuff back into circulation. Stops it having to piss me off by definitely not being worth nothing but not being worth enough to easily eBay. I wandered around my flat with a notepad. Mostly it was a day about listening to the radio. I’m still a sucker for listening to international test cricket. It’s mostly people talking about birds and occasional moments of mild excitement. England are trying very hard to notlose. They might actually win tomorrow. The bookies have them as favourites. You can get 3-1 on New Zealand – and knowing how England tend to play that’s a pretty good bet in my opinion. England are only 5 balls away from losing if every one is a wicket. They need 65 runs with one specialist batsman left. I seriously considered getting a last minute ticket to Lords tomorrow for £45 and rolling up on my own to witness the result for better or for worse. Then I decided there were much better things to do with my time and money.
Platinum jubilee. Aka platty jubes. Aka lovely jubbly. It’s a big statistic, 70 years. She is about to beat Bhumibol, and then it’ll just be Louis XIV of France. No real surprises that she’s lived as long as she has – look at her mother, and she was pickled in gin. A few hundred years ago, all of Lizzie’s distant relatives would be sharpening their claymores and thinking about how to get nightshade into her water supply. In a different world, Andrew would be fitting a remote control bomb into a corgi, while Harry would be programming American assault drones. Here we can just sing songs about God for her in St Paul’s, even though she’s too tired to attend. People are sharpening the knives for the whole institution. But Christ, seriously? Boris as head of state? No matter how much I am told that things would be different if the money they cost was liberated, I know it not to be the case, and I suspect that even with jugears we will not look as ridiculous with the attached history and pomp… It looks old fashioned because that’s our brand. It sells. We can own it or we can try and modernise and realise that we are just a bit shit plus full of our own self-importance. I guess we will see. And for now she will continue, although she’s clearly lost her will with Philip. Companionship is so important. We would all do well to remember that.
The cold is blowing in again. It’s June at last but I’m still not feeling like summer has hit. I’m hoping for a nice day tomorrow as I intend to spend it with champagne and bunting. Also because I want us to have time to win the cricket. Two more days of it. 100/1 on the draw. Might be worth a pound…
I’m gonna put no money on it. More important things there as well. Early bed. Hot bath. Lovely jubbly.
AlBarclay 