"I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service."
Today everything is different. The world is not the same as it was yesterday. As I write, the church bells in the market square are tolling. It is midday and they are ringing in collective mourning with those of Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral and Windsor Castle. Every overheard conversation is a variation of the same conversation and the same words can be heard repeated over, and over, and over again in every place and on every pavement.
Last night was disturbed, interrupted repeatedly with bouts of sleeplessness and fretful dreams of my beloved Grandmother who left this world in 2009. Today the airwaves are filled with news-feed from every television and radio channel, the same news that proliferated yesterday, Thursday, from noon. The same words that propagate the pavements. Queen Elizabeth II our monarch is dead. Long live the King.
Chapel is central to the life of the school we chose for our Daughter when we moved here to Cumbria, and in a service which was beautifully woven together by the staff early this morning, senior leadership conducted a time of reflection, prayer and a sombre but reflectively rousing rendition of I Vow To Thee My Country. Only hours after learning that the Queen had passed away, there we were, standing in Chapel, packed to capacity, ending a service arranged at breakneck speed, singing the National Anthem to words nobody in that building had ever uttered before. Send him victorious, happy and glorious…
In the space of 48 hours, as British citizens, we have inherited a new Prime Minister and a new monarch. These two things have never happened in the same week for anyone in living memory. On the back of a global pandemic from which we are just emerging, it is impossible not to feel an overwhelming array of emotions and reflect thoughtfully upon notions of identity and one’s place in the world and history. Such seismic changes in isolation are catalysts for contemplation, but in combination? My British friends who have made their homes internationally have spoken openly on social media about their connection with “home” during this time, or indeed their feelings of distance from it. Like lockdown, a shared cultural change or loss is a great leveller, and we are all, for this brief and passing time, one.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was the Patron of the Scouts for 62 years, and official word has been circulated from Chief Scout Bear Grylls that all meetings should continue with flags flown at half-mast. There will be no exception here in rural Cumbria, with a minute’s silence held this evening and our new investitures making their oath to the King. Life will continue as it did before; Scouts, school, work and public service in all areas will of course continue. But it feels different. The world is simply not the same as it was yesterday.
Selfless, unjudgmental public duty and unconditional service is an almost unknown thing in today’s upside-down world. The ability to reign but not rule, to be humble and humorous in spite of prodigious privilege, and to role-model without judgment of others. Royalist or otherwise, monarchist or otherwise, republican or parliamentarian, these are characteristics that epitomise decency and stability when all else seems indecent and unstable. And therein, for me, lies the loss.
The last twelve months for my family has been a time of monumental change. I have asked my growing, developing, vastly changing children “guys do you feel Southern? Northern? Cumbrian…? Where is home for you?” To which they seem as un-bothered as they are un-committed. They are all and none of these things it would seem, as home in the waters of Windermere as they are on the underground in Central London.
As the scenes from Balmoral flash up on our screens and people lay bouquets and cards in their growing thousands, the same scenes repeat from Windsor and London. “The Queen was so at home here, this is where she stayed with her beloved husband. The Queen was so happy here. This is where she spent the best years of her childhood…” and I understand that home really is where the heart is. Home is where we understand it to be, where we have loved and feel loved. Where we are born and, inevitably, we end our days. Be it a castle, a palace, a flat or a field.
I think it fair to surmise that Britain is feeling very British today, brought together in a shared loss. Not to the exclusion of a global consciousness that is so very dear to me, but in light of a collective mourning. Today we are not Northern or Southern. We are not from Cumbria or Suffolk or London. We are united in our constitutional connection and step forward into the unknown. We are people of Great Britain. We are a country in national mourning.
God save the King.
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