Goodbye, Mrs Windsor
I saw Elizabeth Windsor's face every day when I was a small child. She was at the post office, in the newsagent, and there waiting for me on my first day at infants' school, on the wall, behind the teacher's desk.
I had one of those splenetic teachers, Mrs Ralph, whom I occasionally see in my dreams. When Mrs Ralph was stalking the rows of desks, searching for a child to bring to tears, I would stare at Elizabeth's picture: she was in profile, wearing a small jewelled crown and dark red lipstick. She looked like my mother, Grace, as she emerged from her tiny bedroom after transforming herself with Max Factor and the scent of Evening in Paris. Like Elizabeth's showbiz sister, Margaret Rose, Grace used a silver cigarette case.
Elizabeth was there, watching, when Mr Luker, our angry, red-faced headmaster, shouted at us pasty-faced English children as we struggled to sing "De Camptown Racetrack five miles long – Oh! doo-dah day", with an authentic southern accent and the same guileless joy of what he called "the piccaninnies". She was there watching, hanging from the tongue-and-groove wall of the eau-de-nil assembly hall.
On Coronation Day I had excitedly carried a wobbling green jelly in a cut-glass dish from a neighbour's prefab to our own, because, amazingly, a television the size of a Punch and Judy tent had been installed in the corner of our living room. Richard Dimbleby told us in hushed tones that the St Edward's Crown was very heavy, at 4lb 12oz. When the time came for the archbishop to place the weighty crown on Elizabeth's delicate head, I swear nobody watching or listening took a breath until it was finally settled, and the shout of "God save the Queen!" rang out. I was doubly relieved because I had been worrying that the weight would snap her neck.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/06/queen-jubilee-goodbye-mrs-windsor
= new reply since forum marked as read
