Uplifted by a perfect day’s crowning glory
MY SON-IN-LAW, a Parisian, insists that my daughter and their children address him as “your majesty”. My four-year-old grandson AJ has been sleeping in a crown and Union Flag pyjamas for weeks. Both daughters are turning out Victoria sponges and Coronation quiches – minus the broad beans that everyone agrees are a step too far – on a semi-industrial scale.
Our family has unfurled miles of bunting, thrown and attended six street and house parties, and risen repeatedly to our feet to belt out the National Anthem like a batch of enthusiastic Jack-in-the-boxes.
The children were still coming to terms with the sad demise of Her Majesty after all the excitement of painting and writing poetry about her for the Platinum Jubilee, so the Coronation was eagerly awaited.
A grandma – yours truly – resplendent in a rose-festooned fascinator hosting the proceedings for five hours live on TalkTV merely added to the Feltzian delusions of grandeur.
Imagine the experience from the perspective of three children, aged nine, seven and four. There’s grandma Vanessa telling us the King will kneel – and behold, his Majesty gracefully falls to his knees. All the while they’re nibbling red, white and blue fudge, while watching Paul Burrell, the butler and royal rock, and Sharon Osbourne, personal pal to King Charles, tell me their behind-the-scenes anecdotes of palace life.
GOSH, and now grandma is sweeping into the sitting room in the dress they just saw me wear on the TV. They could confidently have expected a golden coach and Penny Mordaunt’s sword, brandished aloft, to follow.
We’re still glowing from this collective drenching in history and hope. We might even have come to believe that Ant and Dec and Lionel Richie were royal cousins once or twice removed.
We almost started chanting the names of the Windsor Greys pulling the Diamond Jubilee State Coach to Westminster Abbey instead of Santa’s festive reindeer. Heavens, we might almost be prone to anointing each other with oil when the moment feels appropriate.
Some of us, inspired, are now planning to appear at Zekey’s bar mitzvah in four years’ time in matching silver-leaf tiaras and embroidered white cloaks over embroidered white dresses. We’ll look terrific in that rig-out in Hendon, no doubt.
I want to thank the King and Queen for their charming instruction to “mind the gap” on the London Underground, for their great good humour and for their solemnity.
In the words of the hymn, written by poet Lizette Woodworth Reese: “Glad That I Live Am I.”