{"id":15676,"date":"2023-05-19T17:05:26","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T15:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=15676"},"modified":"2023-06-13T15:11:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-13T13:11:06","slug":"coronation-cavalcade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=15676","title":{"rendered":"Coronation Cavalcade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Saturday 6th May 2023.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

From my childhood I remember a large red tome embossed with crowns. I also remember its name (or think I do): Coronation Cavalcade<\/em>. 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<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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]<\/em> over us…” ) but I was most moved by the very personal emotions that the event stirred – memories and childhood, people and places lost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n