"Pop"

"Not many people in here wearing poppies," said Ailz, looking round the pub. I hadn't noticed. More to the point I hadn't thought to notice...

The Queen has only just gone but it seems like forever. She had placed herself at the centre of the Poppy Day experience- of grief and glory and the pretence of military significance- and without her it's falling away, dissolving- along with the rest of the glassy fantasy she and her courtiers, apologists and celebrants had spun out from her peculiarly limited, 1930s, country house vision of the world. The whole thing has gone "pop" like a bubble. But in slow motion. Like a bubble-gum bubble that goes ragged and waves its retracting flanks around before plastering the face with debris...

This always happens when a monarch dies.

The new monarch is such a very different proposition. He is bluff and ruddy. He wears tweed. He shakes hands. He hugs kids. He gets eggs thrown at him.

One of his first acts- not greatly publicised- was to begin selling off his mother's racehorses...

The Distant Booming Of A Big Bass Drum

E's father was killed at Arnhem. Instead of coming to Meeting she attended the ceremony at the war memorial just up the road. Afterwards she joined us for tea and coffee at the Meeting House. Never, she said, had she seen so many people at an Eastbourne Remembrance Sunday parade.

We could hear it- just. The silence in our room- in the half hour following on from 11 o'clock- was underlaid by the distant booming of a big bass drum.

All of which rather undercuts what I wrote in my first post of the day. Never let it be said that I don't strive for balance.

All the same, I'm sticking to my guns (most unfortunate metaphor.) I suspect the attendance bounce is all down to people who are especially keen on Queens and uniforms and big bass drums making an extra special effort in the year of the Queen's death- and doubt that it represents a trend...