Departures we will miss
Ithought I only had medium-sized feelings for the Queen. But with obsessive media conjecture over the state of the 96-year-old’s health, I acknowledge that this subject has big ‘‘feels’’ for the monarch.
I hadn’t planned to watch the coverage of the ‘‘Platty Jubes’’ (Platinum Jubilee) but got completely caught up in the thanksgiving service where Meghan and Harry and Boris Johnson were booed by the crowds on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral.
If you want to know how popular you are in Old Blighty, no need to take a poll, simply climb or descend the steps of St Paul’s and the boo-ometer will deliver your ratings.
In light of the messy departure of the outgoing British prime minister, St Paul’s may seem an age ago, but back then the crowd already had the measure of the man and Boris’ Scarface motto that, ‘‘I always tell the truth – even when I lie’’.
There are rumours that Pope Francis is about to resign, which would make him only the second pope to do so. For his public appearances the Pope is seen in a wheelchair while the British monarch, sensitive to any image of her frailty, now uses a walking stick.
No matter what you think of them, if these two world icons happened to take their leave at the same time, their absence would add insecurity to an increasingly unstable world.
If you can’t be doing with royalty or religion, imagine if Macca (Sir Paul McCartney), Bob Dylan and Dolly Parton suddenly slipped this mortal coil around the same time. Remember how caught unawares we were when David Bowie and Prince kicked their creative and corporeal buckets within months of each other? What a gap they left.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to hasten or pre-empt any of the aforementioned cultural icons’ demise, but to instead, appreciate that they have been fixed stars in the fanbase firmament of our affections.
When history looks back, it is they who have defined their decades and continue to do so. Which brings me back to Liz II, one of the world’s first child actors who has had to be on stage and tolerate the intrusion of cameras since birth. No matter how tough it got, the Queen has never contemplated an off-ramp into a private life, opting instead to stay public property, which to most of us would be an endurance test of just how much duty one could stand.
Looking closer to home, it’s hard to come up with figures who have made our small world stop in its tracks. However, I do remember crowds flocking to attend the funeral service of poet, James K Baxter before unsavoury counter narratives clouded his reputation.
When Big Norm, the Labour prime minister Norman Kirk, suddenly died in office in 1974 at the age of 51, the public display of grief was said to be similar to that of Michael Joseph Savage’s death in 1940. Perhaps David Lange’s death would have met with a similar outpouring of grief had he not resigned in office.
It is hard to predict who gets us going and can produce cathartic outbursts of big feelings, the death of Princess Diana being the benchmark of left-of-field crowd grief.
When the Queen’s reign finally comes to an end, I wonder how those of her subjects, who have trouble being adults, will cope without the calming continuity of their quiet regal rock star Mummy. If you want to know who will be the next British PM, make the candidates walk the steps of Old St Paul’s.