This has been a week of official mourning in the UK for The Queen. It has been marked by 24 hour television coverage of people filing into Westminster Hall to pay their last respects.
The scale of the turnout, and also the sincerity, has been a bit of a surprise. What is being played out globally, it would appear, is a very British cultural feature: queuing!
And not just standing in line but doing it stoically for hours and hours! I guess that is another cultural marker: the stiff upper lip. People have spoken about their various reasons. for example, stating "She did her job for all those years; it won't hurt for me to do mine."
I think also there is a collectiveness and connectedness about all of this public display of feeling. Everyone lays flowers (nowadays it's done a lot at the site of accidents, tragedies) at the entrance of various royal residences. With social media nowadays public displays in this way are immediate and they grow and grow into carpets of flowers with cards, toys and the like.
Following the Act of the Union in 1707, when Scotland and England's parliaments were joined, the Scottish crown jewels, which now had no ceremonial role, were locked away and forgotten about – so much so that they were eventually thought lost.
It wasn't until over a century later that the famous novelist, Sir Walter Scott, rediscovered the Honours, directing a team of workmen to prise open an old wooden chest they had found in one of Edinburgh Castle's strong rooms. Inside were the crown, the sceptre and the sword – which is thought to have been snapped in two to help smuggle it out – and several other items including a mysterious silver wand.
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Preparations for State Funeral next week
At our Sunday meal, I asked the children how they found out The Queen had died. "On social media". Did they have an assembly at school for either the death of the Queen being announced or a statement about the accession of The King. "No".
Did they know the first line of the national anthem? "As Mairi pointed out "They don't know what that is."
I pointed out how the wording has now changed as I attempt to recite (no singing with this bunch) the lines illustrating the point. We did manage a toast saying "God Save the King' but, due to the general lack of interest on all sides we quickly moved on... and things continued to deteriorate...
Ishbel's lovely walnut and carrot cake (made earlier in the day) in the above picture shows how it started out as Spiderman Cake but got turned into a crown with 3 lit candles. (My idea was to attempt some sort of 'memorable occasion'.) Lighting the candles started out with matches which wouldn't light when the side of the box was struck and ended with Harriet (9) and Ellie (7) squabbling over whose turn it was to blow them out.
I spoke to a few folk in the Glasgow area while out and about and they are in the same camp as Iain "Can't be bothered with it all." "Ya canny get anything on the TV because of all they programmes etc etc "
So it seems I am the only person around who is enjoying the colour and the pageantry, the processions, the ceremonies, the rehearsals at 2 am, the programmes about protocol, historical parallels.
Well, I would, wouldn't I!!!! Being a Colonial transplanted here 55 years ago I am in awe of the history, the tradition, the rituals of all of this! Born and raised in a community where everyone came from somewhere else (in my case: grandparents - 3 from England and 1 from Scotland) for many people whatever their background there was a strong pull to their origins. My grandparents went to Canada in the 1910-20's. They, and to a lesser extent, my parents', related very strongly to 'The Old Country'. No they were not poor nor displaced (DPs - displaced people - as they were called) but they still had ties which were strong.
Where they settled was a 'young country'; people often didn't know much about their forebears (for good and bad reasons!). In this country it is different; it's an 'old' country i.e. it is possible to trace forbears for generations.
In Scotland these days displaced people are now settling here. But most Scots I know are from families who go back for generations. They don't have ties (including symbols, rituals) to some other place; it is simply not part of their experience. (Actually, in Scotland history records how things were the other way around: being cleared off the land in the mid 19th century the displaced Scots went to Canada, and Australia, New Zealand etc and settled.)
And so, thinking of the Queen whose funeral is early next week, the only thing to do now is ....
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