Well, thank God that's over.
Was it only me who was rendered mildly nauseous and seized with the compulsion to remain indoors in a dark room until the madness had passed during jubilee weekend?
Is it only me who finds the whole thing in poor taste in a recession? A hollow spectacle of pomp and ceremony, hereditary privilege and the worst in British jingoism and triumphalism? Does it make me shamefully lacking in proper national pride that the union jacks attached to every possible consumer good - including, natch, a small one stuck in a flowerpot with a few dying twigs of lavender and flogged for a tenner as a "Jubilee Planter" - just made me want to swear?
I don't think so, and for several reasons. When people are going hungry, losing jobs and cripplingly in debt right left and centre - literally, the financial crisis was politically egalitarian and took no heed of political creed; only those so swaddled in personal and yes, often inherited, wealth could continue heedlessly living in their houses of gold and diamond studded toilets. I exaggerate, of course, but not by much, and certainly not in the case of the Royals - is a display whose subtext is, essentially, Look How Much Money We've Still Got appropriate? I have no personal beef with the Royals, although I strongly suspect we wouldn't get on. But the idea of hereditary privilege, of being born to rule, of the rest of us being mere commoners and subjects, is deeply morally offensive to me. The argument that the Queen is by now just a symbolic figurehead holds no water, either - with the vast personal fortune, supplemented by public money, property portfolio of palaces and country houses and, as a recent Facebook share that made me laugh out loud had it, a £1 million hat, I doubt that bothers her overmuch.
Some would accuse me of the politics of envy, but that is and always has been a spurious line trotted out to mask the astronomical gap between rich and poor and the ghettoisation and exclusion of the have nots - defective consumers, as Bauman has it, who are shut out of the brave new world and blamed for their own rejection again and again. Never mind that the recession has put brakes on the spending of many previously invited to the consumer party, the discourse of scroungers, layabouts and drains on resources is back with a vengeance now that cutting off aid to those who need it most requires justification.
Which brings me to my second jubilee related point. Just who are the parasites and scroungers here? I'm not a fan of those ugly, distasteful words but in the language of the tabloids, the civil list is a drain on decent taxpayers to the tune of millions - which puts the few weekly quid shaved off already paltry weekly allowances in perspective.
And maybe I'm a cynic or a horrible person, but I actually found the sheer numbers who did buy in, who did jump on the union jack waving band wagon, disheartening and depressing. How willing we are to participate in our own subjugation, whilst indulging our peculiarly British - to indulge momentarily in essentialism - superiority complex which finds its apotheosis in the lovely Royals, and didn't she look lovely, and wasn't she dignified, and on and on. What happened to all the left wing firebrands? Me, I spent the weekend wallowing in nostalgia for the days when I used to burn with pride for my Dad, who refused to stand for the national anthem at school events, who instilled me with principles that caused me, as a seven year old putative Brownie, to refuse the promise on the grounds that I categorically did not promise to serve the Queen as I was against the monarchy (and furthermore, how could I do my duty to a God I didn't believe in?) and who taught me we are NOT anyone's subjects.
I did burn with pride for my Mum, though, who informed her colleague in no uncertain terms that the only way she would be toasting the Queen was if she'd died. We're not beat yet, then. At least not round my manor.
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