'Where Were You...'

In years to come, when I am inevitably asked, 'Do you remember where you were when you heard that the Queen had died', I'll be able to answer in the affirmative: I was watching Home and Away on 5Star.  They didn't interrupt the episode to make an announcement, it just happened that I'd switched on my laptop, glanced down at the newly opened browser to see the headline saying she was dead.  Which seemed a bit abrupt as, when I'd alighted on BBC1 a few minutes earlier, she was still merely 'under medical supervision'.  Not believing anything that I read on the web, at the next commercial break I flipped back to the BBC for confirmation, then went back to Home and Away - we were reaching a crucial point in a major storyline, after all.  Of course, on confirming that Her Majesty was dead, my heart sank.  Not because of grief, but rather because it meant that we were about to be plunged into a period of 'official mourning', when the TV will play nothing but endless tributes to the late Queen for days on end, with everything - sport, comedy, etc - cancelled lest we plebs have the audacity to want to enjoy ourselves.  The newspapers, likewise, will now be full of Royal fawning for the foreseeable future, (with the Daily Mail and Daily Express doubtless trying to prove that the queen was actually murdered by Meghan Markle).  

It's not that I want to seem disrespectful here but, just as when Prince Philip died, much of the media reaction, particularly from the BBC, has been completely over the top.  They don't seem to grasp that we are no longer living in the 1950s - people don't still have a hushed reverence for the monarchy, as they did then.  Yes, we're all sorry that the Queen has died and sympathise with her family, but life goes on.  Stopping people from watching soap operas or the football isn't going to force them into the sort of sack cloth and ashes mourning the establishment seems to think that we should be engaging in, lying prostrate in front of our portraits of the Queen and wailing our grief. What none of them seem to grasp is that nowadays there is a slew of digital and streaming channels which are happily carrying on as normal, even as the BBC and ITV scrap their schedules for the foreseeable future, replacing regular programming with sycophantic 'tributes' to the Queen, repeating the same old platitudes over and over again.  I found it extremely depressing earlier today, when it was announced that the Queen was under 'medical supervision' and the news vultures started too gather at Balmoral, scenting blood.  You could just see the expectation in Huw Edwards' eyes as he began to think that maybe he was going to crown his career by being the one to announce the death of a monarch on the BBC.  

As the circus unfolded, I could hear my late father, an ardent anti-monarchist, complaining that the Queen couldn't at least have had the decency to die before the Platinum Jubilee, thereby saving the taxpayer millions of pounds.  "Now we'll have to foot the bill for a State Funeral on top of that, not to mention a bloody coronation," he would have added.  Still, we have to ask, was it mere coincidence that Her Majesty was taken ill after seeing Liz Truss in order to formally invite her to form a government?  I hold her entirely responsible - the shock of realising that her kingdom was now to be run by a talentless swivel-eyed loon was clearly too much for the Queen.  Personally, I think that Keir Starmer needs to stand up in the Commons, point an accusatory finger at Truss and declare: "You killed the Queen.  You Cunt!  Off with her head!"I'm sure that it would prove a popular move.