In which your storyteller realizes he has traveled across an ocean to stand in the rain for three hours in his best clothes to watch a screen.
1) Unbelievably, I hadn’t gotten to bed until nearly 1 AM, and when the alarm went at 7, I simply could not face it. Coronation be damned, give me another half hour of sleep!
2) But by 8:45 I was dressed smartly in my Sunday best and out the door with an umbrella borrowed from the hotel. And before long I had to start using it, too.
An important — neglected? — verse from “God Save the King.”
3) A largeish emptyish coffee shop on Kensington High Street had the coronation broadcast going on four screens grouped together as one. As I sat there with my latte (I can never figure out how to order coffee in Europe — “Coffee, please” is never enough) and my chocolate croissant, I debated just staying there. But then I said “No!” And off I went to Holland Park.
It was already raining when I arrived.
4) And Holland Park turned out to be exactly the right place for me to see the coronation. A giant screen had been set up at one corner of a large grassy field, with dozens of canvas slingback beach chairs in semicircular rows in front of it. As I stood in the back under the hotel umbrella starting about 10 AM, I realized I would be standing there for just over three hours and wishing I’d brought an Eleanor Lavish Memorial Mackintosh Square. I was certainly not going to risk a soggy bottom in my suit sitting on one of those chairs.
5) The real reason Holland Park was right for me was the crowd size: comparatively small. I doubt there were more than 300 people there at any one time. It really had a nice community feeling to it, and I would have felt intimidated by myself in the bigger crowds along the procession route or in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens.
6) At one point the video froze on a image of various religious types in the Abbey, but the audio had moved on to the clip-clopping of horses. To my surprise, I calmly got out my phone to watch on Yewtybbe until they got things right.
7) To paraphrase the late Jane Austen, “there was a shocking lack of tiaras.” I’ve heard rumors that this was the King’s wish, and I don’t care. Streamlining the monarchy is a good idea, but Daddy needs some sparkle. So many jobs have uniforms, and the job of a princess requires a tiara. There, I’ve said it.
And there he is, Francis Dymoke, the King’s Champion!
8) Streamlining the monarchy is a good idea, but not the part that involves my family. So it was a great relief and a real thrill to see the King’s Champion, Francis Dymoke, bearing the Royal Standard in the procession. Undoubtedly my favorite moment, I could not stop myself smiling while Francis was on screen.
9) Almost as soon as the procession ended and the ceremony begun, I was startled by a voice saying “Excuse me, may I speak to you?” It was a journalist from Agence France Presse (I hope I got the name right) who I had seen videotaping at one end of the area. So, I was interviewed by the foreign press! Now I understand why celebrities have to be so careful, as I was so focused on the ceremony I wasn’t expecting to answer questions about Camilla, or anything else, really.
With the nice French reporter just before I left.
9a) He did ask me about why the coronation was important to me (“Well, my ancestry is from the Champions of the Kings of England, so I really wanted to see Francis Dymoke bear the Royal Standard in the procession”), why I was dressed up (“This is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion and I wanted to look my best, and for me that means a suit and tie”), and how Charles would do as a monarch (“[pause] Well, everyone had low expectations for Edward VII, and he exceeded them all to become the Uncle of Europe, so let’s see how Charles does.”) Sometimes I’m afraid he was quite unintelligible, but that’s because I was old and deaf, dehydrated, and my feet hurt. Who knows what I said?! Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn into an International Incident.
9b) After the reporter returned to his position (wearing a gold plastic crown over his camo green rain poncho), the nice English lady standing just behind me said “Well done, Robert from Boston.” And we had a nice chat.
10) When the television announcer said “Colobium Sindonis, Supertunica,” I blurted out “Gesundheit” before I could stop myself, which caused a Lady Older Than I in front of me to turn around and stare.
11) It did go on a bit, didn’t it? After Charles was crowned I noticed people starting to leave, particularly families with young children. And once the King and Queen left the Abbey, and I knew Francis wouldn’t be on screen any longer — and because Nature was Calling — I left, too.
12) Back in my room I caught the balcony appearance, and then went down to the restaurant for a sandwich, and then back upstairs for a NAP. And somewhere in there I had to catch up on dialogue in Messenger; multitasking is overrated.
13) With a brain of concrete, I trudged next door to the Sainsbury’s to search out some dinner. Last night at dinner Gail asked “You know there’s a hierarchy, don’t you?” “Waitrose to start, right?” “Yes, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Lidl, and then Aldi.” (I hope I remembered that in the correct order.) Possibly because of the coronation, there was no hot food to take away, but I was happy to make do with a couple sandwiches.
14) Catching up on the news and the socials, some people have been enthralled with the day, others have not, either because they don’t like the monarchy in general, Charles and/or Camilla specifically, Charles and Camilla’s treatement of Diana, Prince Andrew, the Sussexes, and/or Great Britain’s violent colonial past. [Insert Your Own Reasons I May Have Missed Here; There Are Quite a Few.] And I won’t say those are bad reasons. It’s been a long time since Great Britain has had an actively incompetent monarch, George IV, “nothing but a painted bag of maraschino and plum pudding.” After “Edward the Caresser,” British rulers have been almost ostentatiously uxorious and dutiful (the Duke of Windsor and That Woman the notable exceptions). As Eleanor of Aquitaine so memorably said in The Lion in Winter, “What family doesn’t have its ups and downs?”
15) I’m not traveling with Uncle Bill’s copy of Harnett Kane’s Louisiana Hayride (I usually don’t), about the corrupt and bullying reign of Huey Long in Louisiana, famously ended by assassination. But his account of Long’s funeral teaches a lesson. All the people from the swamps and bayous who believed the Kingfish cared for them came to Baton Rouge for what may have been the only state funeral Louisiana has ever had. But Kane made the point that it was important for them to have that moment. And while there are a lot of problems in the UK — both with the monarchy and the government — and a lot of problems in the USA, and in every country (as a civilization we are falling apart with centrifugal force), we need this moment of pomp and circumstance and dreaming and ancient ritual. I do, anyway, and I know I’m not alone.
15a) And I needed to see Francis Dymoke. That was important to me, as a touchstone to my father and his mother, for whom that heritage was so important.
15b) I actually responded to a friend quoting Debbie Reynolds in In and Out: “I need some flowers and some placecards and some beauty. It’s like heroin.”
16) Unbelievably, it’s after 10:45 PM. Daddy needs to go to bed!
