And then...
And then, just as I'm complaining that there's nothing happening, Prince Phillip up and pops his cloggs out of nowhere.
Well, not out of nowhere, he was 99 and hadn't been well for a while, but still. You don't really think about it, do you? I'm fairly sure some people you just weirdly assume are probably immortal. Whether you give two shits about the monarchy or not you get used to cultural figures sort of just existing.
Feel sad for Her Maj, though I am sure she had a lot more prior warning than the rest of us did. Though my brain does immediately wander to "So, what now?" Swiftly followed by "And how long until she follows him?" There's a lot of annecdotal tales of older couples not lasting long without each other. Hopefully it'll be a while, I'm not sure as a nation we're quite ready for that particular sea-change on top of *everything else* in the last year.
Though one wonderes what they're going to do about the funeral in these Covid times? There's still technically a restriction on numbers for funeral gatherings, though I'm sure they could make an argument on changing the rules for a state event. But then, that also has to be balanced against how it would look to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost loved ones in the last year who weren't allowed to mourn properly. That's a really difficult path to navigate. And one that could really sway some harsh opinions on an already beleagured monarchy with some hectic PR probems.
Handled well and it could be humanising in a way little else could manage. Handled wrong and it could be an uncontested out-of-touch disaster.
Well, not out of nowhere, he was 99 and hadn't been well for a while, but still. You don't really think about it, do you? I'm fairly sure some people you just weirdly assume are probably immortal. Whether you give two shits about the monarchy or not you get used to cultural figures sort of just existing.
Feel sad for Her Maj, though I am sure she had a lot more prior warning than the rest of us did. Though my brain does immediately wander to "So, what now?" Swiftly followed by "And how long until she follows him?" There's a lot of annecdotal tales of older couples not lasting long without each other. Hopefully it'll be a while, I'm not sure as a nation we're quite ready for that particular sea-change on top of *everything else* in the last year.
Though one wonderes what they're going to do about the funeral in these Covid times? There's still technically a restriction on numbers for funeral gatherings, though I'm sure they could make an argument on changing the rules for a state event. But then, that also has to be balanced against how it would look to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost loved ones in the last year who weren't allowed to mourn properly. That's a really difficult path to navigate. And one that could really sway some harsh opinions on an already beleagured monarchy with some hectic PR probems.
Handled well and it could be humanising in a way little else could manage. Handled wrong and it could be an uncontested out-of-touch disaster.