It has been said that moments before dying your brain offers you flashbacks of your life. Strictly speaking the truth of this might be considered difficult to verify and must I suppose, be an assumption based on the narrative of people suffering close calls. Thankfully, I am still a part of this world and watching the Queen` s funeral involved a number of emotions, yet hardly any resulting in what might be deemed as a close call.
Despite this my brain insisted on taking me back to the time Elizabeth and I became part of one another`s lives. Don` t get me wrong, , we had never actually met, the closest I ever came was catching a glimpse of her at the Braemar Highland Games about 40 years ago. No, it goes back further than that, to be precise a little over 70 years to 1952 when her father George VI died and she became queen. I was five years old and had already lived in England for two years together with my mother and my R.E.M.E. lieutenant colonel stepfather.
It was on that day the 6th February 1952 that our relationship began. For all intents and purposes she became my queen and I became her subject, with the formalisation of the former in June 1953 and the latter a number of years later. Since the day of her coronation when I first became aware of our affiliation on receiving a coronation mug at school, she has been part of my life. Again please do not misunderstand me, neither of us really got into each other` s hair, not least me of course. Although she might be considered as having been indirectly responsible for my upbringing, in school, including mugs and other manifistations of the monarchy, though never effusive, together with my immediate upper middle class surroundings of family and friends.
I have never considered myself an obsessive royalist although see sense in the institution itself. At the early age of round about eight, I was quite shocked when one of my friend` s mother was frank about her thoughts on royalty as she sat breast-feeding an infant. Recalling this incident many years later brought on the understanding that her child had been gulping down large helpings of republican milk. At the time I was just a little confused but realize today that it was my first awakening to politics and class. I recall relating the incident at dinner that same evening and there was not only a complete absence of outrage but almost no response at all. That I had a working class friend whose republican mother spoke badly of the monarchy whilst breast-feeding her infant, was obviously just one of those things and nothing to get excited about. The attitude at that dinner in response to my story was certainly telling and although only a minuscule part of my upbringing, definitely not insignificant.
A lifetime of posting letters in EIIR letter-boxes, travelling the continents of the world carrying the comforting, although in some places not quite so reassuring text, ”…Requests and requires in the Name of her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary,” has come to an end.
A curious relationship, so distant yet so close.
Having watched the respect shown to Elizabeth at her funeral and the kaleidoscope compilation of mourners from all corners of the world, I am just one. Yes, that is how I feel.
