25,550 Days!!!
Weather in the Tries:
Our temps are all down in the 80s & high 70s. Which is wonderful, but we have smoke, which is not, I can feel it, but will hunt down my masks and filters.
25,550+ Days!!!
2 June 1953. It must have been one of the last days of the school year, I was ten years old, so probably fifth grade? Maybe fourth, I don’t remember, but I do remember the school had a black and white television, and just the size for a moderate blue collar home to have, and they placed it on the stage in the auditorium, and each class came in for an hour or two, to watch whatever portion of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II their room was assigned. It was broadcast live all the way from London to Portland, Oregon. The picture was black and white (I already said that, didn’t I?) and so much snow it looked more like a blizzard in the Arctic than inside of a cathedral. My class was in the auditorium for the actual Coronation. I seriously doubt I was so taken with the history as I was with the television.
As I grew, I began to be a bit more aware of the Royals, and the history I watched as a kid. I never had the complete fascination with the Royal Family as some of my American compatriots have, but I’ve found them interesting from time to time. And now that the Queen has actually died (I thought she’d go one forever), I find it utterly amazing she was on the job for seventy years, 25,550 days. Actually, she was employed in the same job longer than that, I didn’t figure in leap years. She was Queen. Was she ever Mummy or Auntie, Grandmum, was she ever invited girl’s night out, or to a friend’s house for an R-rated movie and a beer? Did she ever see Shirley Valentine? Did she laugh? Did she wish she could leave like her uncle? Like Shirley?
I was in school when she became Queen, and I grew, got married, divorced, put time in the military, remarried, had two kids, divorced, worked a job until I could retire, then started working on my dream of becoming a writer. And all that time, she was Queen. To my knowledge, she never complained about it, she knew her job, and though she may not have asked for it, she knew what it was, and she knew had an obligation to the people, the crown, and I’m sure, to herself.
For 25,550 days she was, at least publicly, unflappable. And while she was Queen, she was steadfast, and always, always, proper. It must have broken her heart when Andrew’s friendship with Jeffery Epstein became known, as it must have also broken her heart when Diana and Fergie both divorced her sons. And Anne, Princess Royal also divorced her husbands. It looks like Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex is still married to his first wife, Sophie Rhys-Jones.
Gads, I barely made it through my job long enough to retire, I don’t know how I would have handled being Queen of some country. Probably not well, and certainly not with the panache Elizabeth II presented the world.
It will be interesting to see how Charles III handles the job. Will he stay until he dies? Will he bring William in as an assistant to the king? It seems like an awful thing to saddle a young person with, I hope Charles spends a few years teaching William what he needs to know. But then, maybe Grandma has been doing that right along.
I have a little empathy for both Charles and William. They were raised to succeed in that job, in a way, they were raised like girls—be sweet, don’t argue, never show you’re more intelligent than a boy, learn to cook, sew, be careful how you dress, play a musical instrument, learn to be a housewife and servant to your husband, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Photos of the Week:
Books: Remember, if I finish a book, I review and post it to http://lenoragood.blogspot.com
I have started Brotherhood of the Wheel, by R. S. Belcher. Not very far into it, but so far, it’s pretty good. Got a little gruesome at the beginning, but then I remembered Golgotha did, too, so I kept reading and the next chapter equaled out quite nicely.
Earworms:
And Another One Bites the Dust
Hey, you knew I couldn’t pass up on Queen music and quotes.
Quotes from Freddie Mercury: (Farrokh Bulsara, iconic singer with a 4-Octave range! And, of course, founder and frontman of Britain’s other beloved Queen.)
“I want to lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.”
“I’m hopeless with money; I simply spend what I’ve got.”
“You can be anything you want to be, just turn yourself into anything you think that you could ever be.”
And so a week has passed and the world continues to turn. The nights and days are cooling, and once again Paradise and Kennewick become synonymous. Except the smoke is moving in. Some of the masks work really well to keep the smoke out.