Diamond Jubilee Pageant: A Right Royal Wash-out
You have to feel for the Queen. Sixty years of rule and 86 years of age, and when the time finally came to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, she had to stand out in the cold and damp for some three hours, gritting her teeth and ensuring none of the thousands who came out to watch could view her displeasure. As usual, HRH Queen Elizabeth II has put everyone else before her now weather-beaten person.
After a week of almost Mediterranean heat, this weekend has once again seen London dip right back into the wintery monotony which has hung over it like a bad smell for the bulk of 2012, right at the very time when two and a half years of planning reach their peak, and the country goes into Diamond Jubilee celebration-mode with a four day diary packed almost exclusively with outdoor activities. You also have to feel for the thousands of people who were out waiting hours by the river today to see a glimpse of HRH upon the Royal Barge, and the thousand or so ships which made up London’s biggest River Pageant for some 400 years. Not only must they have freezed (I, sensibly, wasn’t one of them), but they’ve probably all caught the flu.
The broadcasters kept on telling us that the weather didn’t dampen Jubilee spirits, but come on, let’s get real here – half of the pageant could barely be seen through the mist which descended over London, covering up much of the newly-constructed Shard in its midsts (it is, after all, the tallest building in Western Europe, but more than usual of it’s lofty facade disappeared today) or because of the rain drops covering the lenses of TV cameras. Meanwhile the large finale of hellicopters and goodness knows what other treats had to be cancelled, while a group of poor sodden opera singers desperately carried on until the end, dripping from head to toe atop their boat like a group of stranded sailors, no doubt praying that they would avoid electrocution from all of the drenched microphones wired around their person.
That is not to say that the good old British spirit did not live on, making the most of a bad situation (every cloud has a silver lining and all that jazz) but just imagine how good it could have been if the clouds, which feel insuperably magnetised towards the UK soil, got lost, for once.
Here’s hoping for a bit of sun tomorrow, and that the Queen is suitably wrapped up with a hot water bottle tonight.
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Jun 5
National pride in a Diamond Jubilee Spectacular
As the Diamond Jubilee weekend draws to an end, there is a unanimous consensus that London has never looked so good, nor love for the Royal Family reached such an all-time high. Today’s climax of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations brought with it all the spectacular pomp and ceremony for which Britain is famed around the globe, awe-inspiring parades of gold and red, plush uniforms, glittering livery, grandly dressed horses and the stunning uniformity of hundreds of cavalry riding with precision along union jack flapping and crowd-lined streets. At its centre, the Queen and the Royals were a delight to watch, humbled and stunned by the incredible show of public support, as they made their way back to Buckingham Palace which last night played host to an unbeatably brilliant star-stunned concert and fireworks spectacle, and which today brought the celebrations to a glorious climax with the Queen’s balcony appearance and Royal Air Force fly past.
Words alone cannot properly express the full glorious extent of the past weekend, when spirits have run so high, and all the British and millions from Commonwealth countries around the world have joined together in giving shared thanks to the Queen for 60 years in which she has sacrificed herself for the good, the stability and the strengthening of all her peoples. The party which has resulted shows that London knows how to celebrate, even when times are down, and as the Diamond Jubilee has awed across three days of brilliant spectacle, we can only now sit back and look forward in feverish anticipation towards the Olympic festivities which are still to come.
Norms fly the flag for the Diamond Jubilee procession (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)
Since words are insufficient to express the brilliance with which London erupted into Jubilee carnival this weekend, I have scanned the internet, collecting together a series of photos which show just how incredible London looked as millions celebrated this weekend. But before you take a look at those, cast your eye over this little sketch which I made as the celebrations progressed. For in Norm world, they too have celebrated the Diamond Jubilee, lining the streets, waving the flag, and celebrating 60 fantastic years of their Queen. Long may it continue!
Note: these photos (apart from my sketch above) are from the internet. Appropriate copyright for the images is shown where the source was indicated on the bottom of the photos. Where a source is not indicated, the copyright belongs to either the BBC or the Daily Mail websites.
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