My Sit(ting) Room – Page 2 – My Own RE:public

Coronation Cavalcade

Saturday 6th May 2023.

From my childhood I remember a large red tome embossed with crowns. I also remember its name (or think I do): Coronation Cavalcade. Having come across it during a juvenile rummage around, I remember thinking it to have been published in commemoration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953; this probably suggested to me by reliable sources, and I have no reason to believe that was not so. It was chock a block full of black and white photos from that day but also from the young Queen’s childhood and formative years, and there were lots of words too on that shiny paper once favored for such books. There was only one color plate: a frontispiece of the newly crowned monarch in her coronation regalia. (It may well have been like this one.)

There was a fold out royal genealogy attached to the inside cover to which my mother had neatly inked in further unions (she didn’t live to see the procession of dissolutions!) and progeny. My mother was of the Queen’s generation and very much a royalist. Not a silly, fawning sort, mind, but a traditionalist just the same. (And, she did have a sort of ‘queen’ look and disposition: there were hats and gloves and handbags, she loved horses and dogs and the Anglican Church…) What she did not have in common with the Queen was a long life. What happened to that book I don’t know, or even whether I am misremembering all I have just said.

So this day, the Coronation Day of King Charles III, was spent in a state of trying to rise above a surge of sentimentality – and not succeeding , instead being swept along in the moment, nourished with tea and scones and the temptation of nostalgia. The public spectacle was awesome (despite the inclement weather, and what I thought to be my original word play on “…long may he reign [sic] over us…” ) but I was most moved by the very personal emotions that the event stirred – memories and childhood, people and places lost.

*The Coronation invitation and an official portrait of the newly crowned King Charles III and Queen Camilla* (www.royal.uk)

A couple of weeks have now passed. What remains (other than a renewed penchant for the much maligned scone)? This newly cast Royal Family – modest now in number, with a more modern agenda – has been dutifully going about their business. Looking good. Doing what they do. Only Time will decide whether the House of Windsor and its hereditary monarchy will continue in its constitutional role in British life. My own Re:publican sympathies are not to be denied, but the ancient isles must decide their own fate. And, that, something which they do with exceptional regularity one has to say!

Cold comfort

Chilly – if it were not so warm – is the latest so-called Synthesis Report just presented by the IPCC and soon to be published in full.

Simply stated; the 1.5C limit presumed to be the maximum global temperature increase beyond which damage to the earth’s environment would be irreversible is more than in jeopardy – probably unattainable. That’s the pessimistic reading, and perhaps the only reading.

The Guardian this morning reports and offers some clear analysis. Optimistic is it not.

Direct links below to PDFs of the press release and summary; it is said that the full report – a hefty affair, that few would seriously read I would say – will be available soon.

Download Press Release

Download SuMMary

Fuelling the fires

In due course, it maybe that this year now ending will never ring with quite the foreboding of some during the last century; say, 1914 or 1933 or 1939 (or as they are so considered in retrospect rather than the lived experience of those years.) Certainly though, at the very least, 2022 will stand there in the annals as one defined by crises and disruptive influences. It may even turn out to be the year that is the pivot to a new world and economic order, a realignment of interests and expectations; and whether that will be for better or ill only time will tell.

In the short term, it is not to be denied that there are enough reasons to be found for a pessimistic outlook; climate catastrophes and their consequences, energy dependencies and their consequences, geopolitical turmoil – Russian aggression, mixed messaging from China, collective naval-gazing wherever one looks. But there is also cause for some optimism; a pandemic evolving to a manageable endemic state, signs of political and economic stability in the United States (relatively speaking!), indications of the “west” engaging with the “global south” with renewed energy (albeit born out of self-interest) and fresher ideas that go beyond mere words (and markets and profit margins!).

On a personal level, as this year ends, I admit to have well and truly run out of gas in the home stretch! Yes, yes, the pun is more than intended! What has plagued (!) me in the last weeks, I guess I will never now know. Enough to say, my bringing in of the New Year 2023 will be very quiet indeed and it is all I can do to resolve to get myself fit (in body and mind and soul) for all the fights that surely lay ahead; fuelled as they are by fires of discontent – ignited deep within where the narrative of each life resides, or fed from out there in an increasingly fractious world where the big stories are made to then settle as burden upon us all.

My own agenda and aspirations for 2023 are still being mulled over and will be written on in the next week or so.

Just another day in SW1

Each aerial view of each mini-cavalcade of darkened Land Rovers led by outriders in royal blue and luminous yellow brings one near to all that topography of land clustered tight, then precisely coded, within the celebrated London environs of SW1; compressed there within its borders all the ruling powers of a kingdom.

The Postcodes Project – SW1: Belgravia, Brompton, Millbank, Pimlico, St James’s, Victoria, Westminster

A neck of the woods that I know well, albeit from from the vantage point of another SW (storied also but where real people live – or once lived) and from halcyon days long gone, but few I would say have ever journeyed these fabled routes, either actually or on the wings of imagination, as many have done in most recent times gone – as the late summer of 2022 turns to autumn, as a monarch departs the mortal world and another ascends to her place, as a Prime Minister goes and another comes, and as a Prime Minister goes and another comes. I am not repeating myself! Blink and history was there just waiting to be missed.

On Thursday, after 44 (!) days in office, Liz Truss announced her resignation, and today this found its formal conclusion in the requisite audience with King Charles III at Buckingham Palace and, shortly thereafter, Rishi Sunak, the newly elected [sic] leader of the Conservative Party, being invited by the King to be his Prime Minister.

From memory: After the wheels finally fell off Boris Johnson’s government at the beginning July, a convoluted process for the leadership of the Tories began with the whittling down to two contenders – Truss and … yes, Sunak! – and continued through the summer with a series of so-called “hustings”. Sunak was favored by conservative parliamentarians and Truss by Party members and, yes, the latter trumped the former. Two days after receiving Johnson and Truss (not in SW1, but Balmoral – for reasons which were sadly to become clear) and doing that which the monarch is anointed to do, the Queen died. Granted, an interrupted start extraordinaire but then Truss seemed to tout the powers of disruption. All very well, one could say, but did she not know that in times of global crisis markets and their makers crave at least the promise of stability. In a matter of weeks a complete economic framework, misguidedly constructed on a toxic mix of low taxes and high borrowing lay in shambles, and with it Liz Trusses job and reputation.

And so it was, this time round, in just a few days, and with Boris Johnson returning with fanfare from a Caribbean jaunt, the Tories heaped on the wearied Brits another leadership “election”! More skillfully modified this time round, with a set of rules that would, with any luck and some reason, circumvent interference from pesky Members. And in the end, so it did: Bojo knew when to fold, as did, albeit at the last moment, another penny pretender (called Mordaunt), and Rishi Rich was left holding the winning hand. Like democracy is a game of poker!

Wikipedia has an entry with the title October 2022 United Kingdom government crisis where you and I both can check the chronology of events, whereby they helpfully suggest in the header that this “Not […] be confused with July 2022 United Kingdom government crisis.” !

On Rishi Sunak, putting aside the politics, it should be said that he is the first Prime Minister from an ethnic background (okay, there is the Disraeli exception – not quite the same thing I would suggest) – his parents, of Punjabi descent, migrated to the UK from eastern Africa in the 1960s; married to the daughter of an Indian tech. billionaire (with modest beginnings); a practicing Hindu. In other words, a biography, irrespective of the advantages granted to him by good fortune, and fortune, that only a very few years ago would have made a rise to the highest echelons of power almost inconceivable. Meritocracy sometimes works it seems. A remarkable story in many respects, and that Sunak’s success should correspond with Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light, and in this year that remembers the end of the Raj and the 75th anniversary of Indian independence, is highly symbolic and one of those strange quirks of fate.

When the processing is over

All good things come to an end – earthly lives, sovereign reigns, civil queues, cavalcades and processions. And so, yesterday, did all of those as they relate to the life and death of Queen Elizabeth II. Some say people pass – away, on, to the other side, whatever – but I say it is Time that passes, and we all just the accompaniment – irrespective of our stand in this life.

*Queen Elizabeth II’s Funeral Procession leaving Westminster Abbey after the state funeral (19.Sep.2022)*

Culminating with a State Funeral at Westminster Abbey and a Committal Service followed by a private interment at Windsor – with all the intermittent comings and goings and spectacular processing – these few days since the Queen’s death on 8th September have been extraordinary to watch (thank god for the BBC; this hopefully to be remembered when the license fee debate reemerges as it surely will); the precision of events, the organization, all just awesome to behold (the tainted reputation of Diana’s infamous “grey suits ” – embraced it has to be said by the Sussexes – suddenly and probably temporarily rehabilitated). Beyond the personal and collective grief displayed with abandon, the fair-minded and inquisitive observer has been initiated in a multitude of historical and constitutional rites and rituals. For instance, the so-called Accession Council’s formal proclamation of the death of one monarch and the accession of the new – the Privy Council given a public airing. Or those final moments in St. George’s Chapel when the crown, scepter and orb were removed from atop the Queen’s coffin to be replaced by the Lord Chamberlains’ broken wand, then to be lowered to the lament of a lone piper into the vault.

I dare say there is such a thing as being too captive to tradition, but there is also something to be said for the consoling power of ritual and the promise of continuity offered by tradition and precedent. And, if one is (as I often am) in awe of the British talent for theater, it has to be admitted that the occupants of successive Royal Households right up to the Windsors have more than played their role.

Every corner of the medial landscape is strewn with words and images from the last week or so – some appropriate, some not so. For something a little different amongst various degrees of sentimentality and silliness, A.N. Wilson’s piece in The Spectator is a sensible contribution (if you can get it…by which I mean circumvent the paywall) and on a more scholarly note, I let some literary and academic voices from the UK, speak on their (Her) Majesty on Radio 4 – you can’t say HM’s broadcaster was not prepared for these days of passing.

The Queen

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II – The Queen – died yesterday at Balmoral. Ancient isles morn – as do I, for she was my Queen too; as a child of the realm, she a presence in my entire life. The Queen offered constancy and dignity in an ever changing and fractious world – for seventy years and in places far flung. As with many who have long harbored republican sentiments and just as long lived in denial of her mortal state, I too have been taken aback by the welling of emotion that the Queen’s death has summoned from deep within. Psychologically, unresolved “mummy issues” comes to mind to explain what I can only identify as an overly sentimental reaction on my part. But I have already noted an abundance of, shall we say, rational persons of standing, of, shall we say, approximately my age, mentioning how much the Queen reminded them of their mother. And I don’t think they are talking about physical resemblance or occupational or situative dispositions but, rather what, until yesterday, was the living, breathing symbolism for an entire generation, an epoch.

So, the second Elizabethan age ends, and that of King Charles III begins; a new era (called what? Caroline? Carolean?) to be observed with less baggage, greater distance, less emotional attachment, but perhaps more rigorous intellectual curiosity. And that cannot be a bad thing.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II – born 21st April 1926, died 8th September 2022

The newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in London, 1953. Photograph: STF/AFP/Getty Images

Costing a life

During the height of the Covid crisis (hopefully to never venture higher), there was “out there”, where opinions fester and, yes, take on a life of their own, an ongoing debate concerning the value to be placed upon any life; considered in terms of years already lived and the potential for those yet to come. Stated in short: Must society and its institutions protect the older amongst us (seniors or retirees, say) or rather focus on the more productive, those in the middle of life (workers, parents, students) or, indeed, the very youngest with the most years yet before them (infants, school children)? It could hardly surprise, that neither a morally nor a functionally sustainable solution could be agreed upon, rather, as the pandemic wore on, what could be witnessed was only a hardening of the positions and an intensification of already existing tensions between generations – and interest groups (e.g. employers, unions, health services, schools) in their service.

Mostly, I must say, I found these debates exceedingly irritating; often simplistic, and very often the empiric data on which arguments were built being cherry-picked for purpose and presented as evidential – and by all parties. It seemed to me, in the midst of this global crisis that dominated every aspect of many people’s lives, that solidarity should be encouraged and not fault lines created across nations, class and generations. Especially, the latter surprised me. I hadn’t realized the fragility of our modern societal (and familial) structures, in which one is viewed essentially only in relation to the discretely – and discreetly! – numbered stages of one’s life.

Now, an inflammatory issue reemerges (as if it ever went away!) that is in some respects analogous; arising from a quite different circumstance but none the less still concerned with – in fact, springing from – the very murky, ill-defined logic that results from trying to neatly organize all the stages of a human life. I am speaking, of course, of the abortion debate in the US; heating up again following the Supreme Court leak that more than suggests an impending overturn of Roe v. Wade and the Court’s intention of sending abortion rights to the mercy and inconsistencies of state jurisdiction, and being fought with the usual ritualistic fervor.

As in those arguments surrounding measures to curb the pandemic, again, in respect to abortion rights, one is confronted with a situation that seemingly demands a value (of life) judgement. And to an even more radical degree. A complex matter, but one deserving of consideration.

One consideration may follow a scenario like this:

If a foetus is a life, when is it a life? And what value may be placed upon that life? Say, for instance, we take a 10-year-old child; one who may be expected to live for eighty more years; who may earn x amount in that period by some productive means (whereby the productivity is highly subjective and variable) and thereby contribute to society; who may themselves have x children; x grand-children. Is that child’s life more valuable than that of their parents with half of their life (therefore their productivity – in the widest sense, including giving life to this child) behind them, and even more so than that of their retired perhaps ailing grand-parents? Following this logic, does not a 10 week old foetus then have even greater potential, therefore greater worth? And in the preceding embryonic stage, more so again? Generally speaking, and particularly in terms of the latter stages of the argument, I would suggest that most reasonable people would find absurdity in the hypothesis.

(I recall a thought experiment being posed along the lines of: Say, a maternity clinic is on fire and there is the opportunity to save either a mother or a baby from the ward or a collection of IVF embryo cultures in a laboratory awaiting transfer. I cannot believe anyone’s inclination would be to first think about the embryos; our instinct seems to inform us as to what human life is – and it is not to be found in a Petri dish. And such was the unanimous result of the experiment.)

When things fall…

Catching up on some London Review of Books reading – with which I always seem to be in arrears, and which is not always my fault because continental Europe delivery from the island is somewhat tardy – I would very much commend Tom Stevenson’s excellent reportage (LRB Vol. 44 No. 7 · 7 April 2022) of the first weeks of the Ukraine war. Framed by his journey out of Poland, first to Lviv then Kyiv, and described with an observant eye for the landscape and the human elements of the catastrophe that has befallen this land, Stevenson doesn’t shy from the complexities of geo-politics and some of the more technical aspects pertaining to defense and military – strategy, equipment, etc.

With words familiar to me for reasons different but somehow the same – see this recent post – the title of Stevenson’s piece, “Things fall from the sky”, resonated, and came to be explained by this passage in which Stevenson describes his crossing into the eastern side of Kyiv:

[…] A two-chair barber shop in a corrugated metal shed at the side of the road had opened its doors under a sign that read: ‘Express haircuts: fast and quality. 60 hryvnia.’ Marina, the woman working there, was turning away the local babushkas: she only wanted to serve volunteers. She spoke Russian with a heavy Ukrainian accent. The barbershop had reopened one week into the invasion, she said, and it would stay open ‘until things start falling from the sky’. In fact, things were already falling from the sky. […]fragments of a Russian missile – shot down by Ukrainian air defences – had landed on a housing complex next to a nursery school. The crater at the foot of one of the tower blocks was about four metres across. […]
LRB Vol. 44 No. 7 · 7 April 2022

In my blog post that I refer to above, I was pondering – my thinking very much influenced by how it was that so very many clever people over a considerable amount of time failed to recognize Russia’s intentions – the Bruegel depiction of Icarus’ fall from the sky; an extraordinary event seemingly unattended by all and sundry, and here we have Stevenson’s Marina, representative of many of the inhabitants of Kyiv, trying as best she might to get on with her life but ever alert, waiting …

Tom Stevenson’s piece is dated 25th March. Since he wrote, the war has intensified, atrocities against civilians have been uncovered – in Bucha for instance. And, as I write now, both Mariupol and Kharkiv are devastated, as are any number of villages in the eastern and southern regions. Kyiv still stands and with it a nation and a legitimate government, and its allies – with ever more financial and military support (the latest package from the US: a mind-boggling $33 billion). The prospects of an end to warfare, even of a return to diplomacy, have evaporated I fear. But to whom does one talk? To Putin? I think not. I would welcome Stevenson’s reasoned voice again, even when anything said may quickly be overtaken by events.