All over Britain, those flags are being hoisted – red, white and blue are the new black. The British flag is everywhere, in the streets and the homes of many excited Brits….some of them, I’m told, are even wearing Union Jack underwear, well I assume so. It can’t all be just a marketing ploy.
There is a lot of marketing for sure but, I suspect, only guessing really, that most Brits think the Queen is OK. She might have her moments when she comes across as a miserable even bad-tempered woman but she has to do a lot of really boring things and shake a lot of hands when she would probably rather be at the race course or shooting pheasants in the country.
I think we know she isn’t and never was a Princess Diana and in that way she has been difficult to love but she is a decent woman and has been very dedicated to what is, if we’re honest, a very peculiar job.
She really does believe that she is consecrated to serve her nation and to be Defender Of The Faith, head of the Church Of England. She has lived up to her beliefs, eccentric as some of them now seem to most of her more modern-minded “subjects” but she is generally respected for this. As a nation we are quite generous-hearted to people especially as they get older as long as they don’t become a nuisance. It is easier to take the idea of a Monarch when the crown sits on the venerable head of an elderly matriarch especially one who lives a pretty decent life and works quite hard at all that hand-shaking and smiling.
So the flags are really out there for her this weekend – taste is taking a back seat, the cans of lager are ready for the street parties, and a great national binge is on its way.
How much we all want to be loyal subjects in an out-dated elitist constitutional system is a question for another time – the Queen will be with us for a long time yet and, it would be a hard-hearted person who wouldn’t wish her a long reign now that she has got this far.
So I hope you will forgive me if I wish her well but refrain from some of the flag-waving and gush.
