Today was an interesting day. Yesterday, Meg took a bit of a tumble in the garden whilst she was helping to bring the washing in off the clothes line. I ascertained that no bones were broken or things displaced so I sat her down and gve her a banana and a cup of hot, sweet tea to cope with any potential shock. She was insistent that she wanted to attend church in about half an hour’s time so this we did. However, this morning, Meg took a bit of extra bedrest and I kept her warm with a bit of electric blanket and dosed her up on ibuprofin to deal with any inflammation. She has some slightly sore ribs and pulled muscles but is basically OK. Once I made sure that she was warm and comfortable, I shot off down to the park and was fortunate to coincide with both of my regular park buddies. I had taken a flask of coffee and I drank this quickly as well as giving my park friends a quick update on what was happening to Meg (coupled with a bad joke) and then got home within three quarters of an hour. Then I cooked a lightning lunch with some beef that I had had cooked and saved half in the freezer so I managed to turn out a ‘normal’ Sunday lunch fairly quickly.

I had allocated this afternoon to bottling my damson gin and this went all quite smoothly once I got my production line all set up. First, though, I had the tedious part done which is pricking each fruit with a special old-fashioned can opener I use for the purpose and I managed to get all of this done before lunch. I sterilised the Kilner jars with baby sterilising solution and then dolloped 450 grams of damsons into each jar, complemented it with 350 grams of sugar and then filled up with 0.75 litre of gin – this combination of ingredients happens to exactly fill a 1.5 litre Kilner jar excellently. The I give each a quick stir, an equally quick shake and finally I invert the whole jar to help the sugar, gin and damsons to adequately mix. I store the completed jars in some cheap plastic washing up bowls which I keep in the agrage to assist with light leakages that sometimes occurs when the jars are inverted. After a day or so, I will turn the jars the right way up and then give each a shake which I will repeat at weekly interevals. This means that the damson gin will be ready for bottling just before Christmas. I see from my record book that I bottled 550 pricked damsons last year on 18th September and this year is an almost an exact repeat of last year. I have bottled 560 damsons this year which has produced 7.35 litres of damson gin altogether which should give me 30 miniature sized bottles once I have persuaded friends and cafes to donate any of those little bottles that come into their possession.

Today is the day before the formal funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth and I will tune in at varous points of the day tomorrow, if only to listen to the music and observe the reactions of the crowd and the congregation. By reading Sky News, I have just learned as well that the crown, which now rests on her coffin, is made of gold and set with 2,868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 269 pearls and four rubies. It contains jewels including the Black Prince’s Ruby, the Stuart Sapphire and the Cullinan II diamond. St Edward’s Sapphire, set in the centre of the topmost cross, is said to have been worn in a ring by St Edward the Confessor and discovered in his tomb in 1163. At 8.00pm his evening, there is to a minute’s silence across the whole of the country. I must say that I would not like to be that part of the diplomatic service and funeral organisers who will have to work out who is seated next to whom. Also, the transport arrangements are going to be ‘original’ given that practically every head of state apart from Jo Biden who will travel in ‘The Beast’ (heavily armoured vehicle) will have to rub shoulders with each other on a fleet of buses. At least by the end of tomorrow, all of this will be over and we can get back to normal life and politics. The government has been promising a welter of announcements including a financial statement scheduled for next Friday which is being deliberately not being called a ‘budget’ I suspect to avoid the scrutiny of the Office for Budget Responsibility which would otherwise give a formal forecast of public finances. This represents a break from all budgets since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 and displays an unfortunate authoritarian tendency to not expose the projected financial plans to a proper independent scrutiny.

Today was a much colder day but beautifully bright. As no rain threatened today, we took the opportunity to put a washing line’s worth of washing out to maximise on the opportunities provided by a bright September day. We collected our newspaper and then made our way into the park, a little later than usual. Then we got joined in the park by Seasoned World Traveller and we exchanged some gossip of the day. We never know quite what kind of topic we are going to end up but we got onto the topic of talking about job interviews we have had. We have both had the experience of attending job interviews that you know you are not going to get but go along for the experience. In circumstances like this, do you say what you really feel or do you try and preserve some semblance of being diplomatic. We have both had experiences of attending interviews when we knew that we would never succeed and have had the pleasure of walking out if we feel we have not been treated particularly well. Then it was home to a lunch of a beef mince stew, enhanced by onions and peppers plus a dollop of brown sauce which is a way in which I cheat slightly to get an enhanced flavour.

Now that I have all of the elements in place and it was a fine day, I decided immediately after lunch to pick the damsons. Looking at the records I have keep over the years, I have generally picked at about this time of year or sometimes a few days earlier, by date. It was just as well I picked today, though, because a few had already dropped off the trees but those remaining on the trees very quickly dropped into my hand. I like to count the number of fruits that I have picked because this is quite a reliable way of measuring out final quantities rather than weighing them out. I knew that last year I had picked about 550 fruits and I picked the same quantity this year which is about 10 Kilner jars worth which should give me about 7 litres worth of prepared gin/vodka. To help me keep count, I have a collection of 1p pieces which I transfer from one pocket to another after I have counted to a hundred. When ultimately bottled, this should give me about 30 bottles worth of small 220cl bottles which is the size I prefer when I eventually make presents of them all. This year, it only took me about an hour or perhaps a little longer to collect the fruit – needless to say, the ‘low hanging fruit’ is easy and quick to pick but then I use a long handled rake to pull down the taller branches within reach so that I can pick the more inaccessible fruits. The tedious task that lies ahead is to put about five gashes in each fruit to allow the gin/vodka to penetrate it but I have found over the years that one of those really old-fashioned tin openers that used to leave a really jagged edge on the tin is an excellent tool for making these gashes in the fruit. After this tedious ask which will take several hours, the actual preparation of the gin itself is a simple enough procedure.

This evening and I think tomorrow evening as well, the BBC have pulled off a master stroke which is a repeat showing of Paddington followed by Paddington 2. After the Queen had participated in a really humorous sketch featuring Paddington (bear), last Christmas, this is fondly remembered as the way in which The Queen shows that she had a tremendous sense of humour. So amongst many of the floral tributes, it is not unusual to find a ‘Paddington Bear’ complete with the words ‘Thank you, Ma’am’ which was one of the closing scenes of the sketch. Some even go as far as leaving a couple of marmalade sandwiches (again, part of the sketch and the whole Paddington story) in their little sealed bag. The authorities are having to gently point out that this is not a good idea as straightforward floral tributes in their thousand are compostable whereas Paddington Bears are not. I can imagine, though, this has proved to be a completely unplanned but innovative way in which young children brought up on Paddington and the recent sketch can make a connection with the death of the Queen and the funeral tributes.

The queue of people wishing to pay their last tribute to the Queen is now 13.5 hours long – this, itself, is down from a high of 24 hours earlier in the day. Most people are saying that their wait is well worth while. A common sentiment that I have heard expressed more than once is that of the Queen can reign for 70 years, what is a few hours of waiting in order to make a final farewell. Once in the queue, people seem to exchanging their life stories and making friendships that will endure. The normal ‘rules’ that Londoners have (do not make eye contact with strangers, do not talk to other people on public transport and so on) seem to have been completely swept away and the queuing population has found the pleaure of actually talking to each other.

It was a beautiful and fine early autumn day but the temperature was certainly dropping by a degree or two and there was quite a sharp breeze. Last night, I completed the bottling of most of last year’s supply of damson gin and damson vodka but not having labelled the Kilner jars, I am not absolutely sure which was which. However, it was quite satisfying to get this job accomplished as it should have been done months ago. I add one or two drops (literally) of almond essence, leave the bottles inverted so that the almond oil diffuses and then store the bottles in a large cardboard tray in the garage. Once you get into gear, the bottling does not take too long but there is a fair amount of cleaning up of Kilner jars and general tidying up and putting away of equipment but all of this got done. As a finishing touch and to make sure that the bottles looked neatly stacked, I sorted them out to size, shape, type of screw cap and so on, only to realise that I now only had only the faintest idea of which was gin-based and which was vodka based. When we were in the park, the breeze started to intensify and I was conscious of the fact that if we had a stormy night, the low hanging fruit of the damson trees would be shaken loose and we would lose almost the entire crop. So I thought I had better go to my local Asda in search of really large bottles (1.5 litres worth) of really cheap gin. I was in luck and bought six 1.5 litre bottles (and 9 litres is just about what I have just bottled from last year’s crop) plus two big bags of sugar to supplement recently bought supplies and four of the largest Kilner jars which Asda often sell at this time of year. I had two large fabric shopping bags stuffed full of liquor and accompaniments so I thought I would avail myself of a shopping trolley and my car was parked about 200 yards away. All was well until I got to a point just beyond the supermarket when all of the wheels locked. Whether this is a special design feature or a complete coincidence, I really cannot say but I turned the trolley around and dragged it to the vicinity of the car so that I could load the precious cargo into the boot. Then the trolley got returned to the environs of the supermarket when the wheels magically unlocked themselves. I now have everything in place to process the next harvest which Meg and I inspected this afternoon and the damsons really are large and ready to fall, as well as being quite accessible. If the weather is fine in the morning, I may well have a picking tomorrow morning but I intend to leave some of the fruit on the trees if they will stay on the trees that long so that when our friends return from holiday on about next Tuesday, I will have a supply of damsons ready for them (as I promised) There is always a bit of a problem what to do with the ‘discarded’ fruit. I used a really large cooking vessel that we can occasionally deploy for large cook-ups and stewed the fruit for an hour or so with the modicum of sugar. Then to test it out, Meg and I treated ourselves to a dollop of the compôte, some vanilla icecream and some yogurt and the result was delicious. The cômpote was nowhere near as tart as I imagined that it might be so more – some obliging friends and relatives might even turn up some of my copious supplies (which I have now bottled) into a tart or a pie.

The incessant focus on the Royal funeral is getting to us both a little but, hopefully, after Monday it will all be over and we can get back to normal life – and politics. Whilst a lot of government activity is ‘de facto’ on hold until after the funeral, the new Chancellor of the Exchequeur has let it be known that he is considering lifting the ‘cap’ of banker’s bonuses. The rules, first adopted Europe-wide, put a cap on a bonus that limited the extent of the bonus to no more than 200% of the recipient’s salary – as though this wasn’t enough. The intention of the cap was to try to curb the reckless behaviour of bankers using weird financial instruments that brought about the financial crash that preceded the pandemic. The government reason that attracting international bankers will grow the economy and hence the tax take -but are not bankers of all people completely adept at siphoning off money into obscure tax havens so they are never taxed at the appropriate rate in any case? I wonder if the forthcoming funeral is just an excuse to bury bad news whilst the attention of the population is distracted. The government have only announced an intention so far and not implemented the lifting of the cap on banker’s bonuses but if this passes muster in the House of Commons, it will really show the population whose side the politicans are on.

It was rather an overcast day but rain did not threaten so we were happy to make our daily trip to the park. Being a Thursday, I got to my favourite supermarket at about 1 minute past 8 in the morning and as usual I could do a quick whizz around unimpeded by other shoppers. Practically everything on my mental list was actually in stock, which removes frustration. There was an article in today’s Times which shows that Aldi have now overtaken Morrisons to move into the 4th position of supermarkets by market share. It is being said that some middle class shoppers can now find Waitrose quality at much reduced prices, but Aldi also has a secret weapon. This is the famed ‘middle aisle’ which is devoted to hardware, kitchen and clothing bargains. When I have done my regular food shopping, I treat myself to a trip up and down the middle aisle to see if I am tempted by anything. This is not just theoretical as about a month I bought a couple of ceramic saucepans which are a delight to cook with and are so easy to clean. I suspect that many of the items are ‘end of range’ items from reputable manufacturers but if an item sells out, that is it – it certainly cannot be relied upon to find it the following week.

In the park today, we met with a ‘doggy’ couple we have had conversations with before and to whom I told my Queen and corgi anecdote when we saw them last Friday. We also coincided with Inveterate Octogenerian Hiker whose daughter-in-law has presented him with an app on his phone which ‘pretends’ that he is actually walking a favourite route else in the world. When he has completed the required number of kilometres he is entitled to be rewarded with a commemmorative medal.Today, he was near the start of a new walk and was located on the Florida keys (an archipelago of small sandy islands on a coral reef). So we left him as he was starting on the next leg of his journey and will evidently see him again in a few days time to check his progress.

After lunch this afternoon, I set myself the task of getting the bulk of my damson gin/vodka bottled. This is not just a job of filling smaller bottles from larger ones but decanting the fluid part of the Kilner jars and straining the contents through some fine muslin dish cloths. As I suspected, my limiting factor was the number of small i.e. 200cl bottles and last night I was engaged in the time consuming task of soaking and scratching off some labels from old bottles. By the end of this afternoon, though, I had bottled two thirds of last year’s crop which was a bumper one. I have filled 42 bottles so far but unfortunately I forgot to label which was gin and which was vodka. However, I am pretty sure that I put the gin versions into the largest Kilner jars and the vodka in the intermediate size. I had to do a quick tasting to ascertain which was which but I do not imagine there is a world of diference between the two. I have to ensure that I have enough Ryman sticky labels of the design I like and have used over the years. I seem to have supplies enough for about two thirds of this years vintage but I have managed to order some extra labels which should be delivered to the Ryman store in a couple of days. After the bottling has been done, there is quite a mountain of Kilner jars to be washed up and eventually sterilised but I have made a good start on this and will certainly now have jars on hand to accommodate this year’s harvest once it is picked.

The news media is still dominated by the news of the Royal funeral and today is the opportunity for members of the general public to bid their last farewells. I have found it quite interesting to listen to the personal testimonies of those intending to join the 4-mile queue. Two recurrent accounts are typically found. The first is members of the armed services who feel almost duty bound to bid farewell to the monarch in whose name they have fought and may have been injured. A second category are people who have met the Queen in the past and have such long lasting memories that they almost feel obligated to pay their respects. There is a live camera feed of Westminster Hall on the Parliament Channel and people often do not know how to react until the moment at which they are in front of the catafalque. Many bow their heads, some make the sign of the cross, ex-military personnel tend to give a salute and others just have a few seconds of almost personal communication with their ex-monarch. Many are saying that they would not have missed the experience for the world, even though they have to queue for hours beforehand.

Today was rather dominated by the fact that half way through the morning, Meg had an optician’s appointment so whilst she was having her eyes tested, I availed myself of a wander through Poundland where I picked up some cut-price cleaning products. As it was a bit late for a park visit, we went home and had our elevenses at home for a change. Wednesday is the day our domestic help vists us and it was helpful that we could sort out Meg’s wardrobe for her Uncle Ken’s funeral which is in about ten days time. Whilst I was out on the road, I bumped into the wifely part of the Irish couple down the road and she managed to convey some good news to us about a health scare she had had recently. When we got home, we organised a sort of mélange of vegetables (onions, peppers, tomatoes, peas, mushrooms) to which mixture I added some sauce and the last of our chicken thighs which had been well and truly seared off. This made quite a tasty dish that turned out to be enormous but Meg managed practically all of hers and the rest of the mixture was gratefully received by our domestic help (who often relieves me of my excess food when I cook too much).

This afternoon was dominated by the solemn procession of the body of the late Queen carried on a gun carriage whilst her children walked behind it. Prince Andrew was, of course, present and had probably seen as much intense military conflict as anybody being a helicopter pilot during the Falklands war (if my memory serves me correctly) However, I have to say that he walked with a truly military bearing as he alone of the Royal Family was dressed in a morning coat as the Queen had stripped him of all of his military titles. However, he was still allowed to wear his military medals. The crowd was largely silent interrupted with occasional bursts of respectful applause. After the scenes of Diana’s funeral, I half expected some much more overt displays of public emotion but the crowd was largely silent. The procession ended with the Queen’s body borne aloft and placed upon the catafalque in Westminster Hall – as in Edinburgh, I had my heart in my mouth thinking about the soldiers who had to perform their tasks flawlessly, which they did. The commentator observed that even members of the military who have the concept of ‘stiff upper lip’ instilled into them exhibited the occasional tear or welling up. When Meghan came into view, joining Prince Harry, it appeared to ne that she had indeed been shedding some tears. I think all observers of the scene were struck by the solemnity and the poignancy of the whole occasion. As the Queen’s body will lie in state for four days, then members of the public are lining up to pay their respects. I have heard an estimate that the length of the queue is up to three miles long and official government advice is to expect a wait of up to 30 hours before your moment has come. People do seem to have come from various parts of the globe to pay their respects, catching flights at the last moment in order to get here on time. Actually, I do remember that on the occasion of Winston Churchill’s funeral, I was twenty years old and a young civil servant working in a ministry in central London. I went to the location (probably Westminster Hall) to view the coffin if only as it seemed the right thing to do. I mentioned this to my son and wondered if he would have done the same if he had been of my age and working in London at the time and he told me that he would. The service when the body of the Queen was received in Westminster Hall was beautifully chosen but I dare say that the plans have existed for years.

After lunch and watching the procession, I set to work in my long delayed bottling of the damson gin. This is slightly complicated until I get into my stride. It involves locating the bottles of the appropriate size and making sure that old labels have been removed after which the bottles have to be sterilised. After that, each Kilner jar of damson gin has to be decanted and filtered through some muslin clothes using a variety of vessels so that each small bottle is eventually filled. So far, I have managed about a third of the whole task and I suspect that the limiting factor may well be the bottles themselves. I do have some wine size bottles that I may have to use eventually and, of course, I can always store the excess in the original gin bottles that I bought when the damson gin was laid down about a year ago now. As is often the case, when the production line gets organised, these jobs can be done fairly quickly if all of the relevant supplies are in place to start with. Each little bottle will be ‘primed’ with a very few dropos of almond essence which is of the ‘tricks of the trade I have picked up over the years but one has to be careful to limit this to only 2-3 drops which is not always easy.

As it is Tuesday, Meg and I fell into our ‘normal’ Tuesday routine but of course the media coverage of the departure of the Queen’s coffin from Scotland is anything but normal. Meg and I collected our newspaper and then joined our happy band who meet in Waitrose each Tuesday for a weekly get-together. After we had had our normal chats and gossiped about the developing news of the Queen’s death, we returned home and I started preparing for my Pilates class later in the day. The new King was meeting with representatives of all of the political parties in Hillsborough this morning. In the afternoon, the TV was covering a Service of Reflection and Remembrance from St. Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast. From what I could tell, the service seemed pretty ecumenical which is surely fitting for the occasion. A hymn was sung to the tune of the ‘Londonderry air’ which is a tune which is used whenever Northern Ireland is represented at sporting events and I suppose is relatively ‘neutral’ given the schisms that have characterised Ulster’s politics in the past. Incidentally, it is quite an interesting fact that no doubt due to the smallness of the relevant populations, sport in the ‘island of Ireland’ has always been reatively united. Meg and I were once on a flight to Spain and found ourselves in the middle of a group of Irish deep sea fisherman who were partaking in an international competition of some sort and they seemed genuinely surprised when we asked the question whether they represented just Eire or the whole of the island of Ireland, when the lattern was in fact the case.

This afternoon, we were watching the departure of the Queen’s body from Scotland which involved evidently the progress of the hearse from Holdroodhouse to the airport in Edinburgh. I must admit that I found the actual takeoff of the flight from Edinburgh representing the absolutely last occasion when the Queen would depart from Scotland quite an emotional and poignant occasion. Meanwhile, attention is now shifting towards London where both the King has arrived back and where the Queen’s coffin is due to land shortly. I imagine, as I write, that the progress of the Queen’s coffin from RAF Northolt towards Buckingham palace might be quite slow and painstaking as the crowds gather to line the route. As many commentators are now saying, it is one thing for a person to die but the absolute fact of this is thrust to the front of one’s consciousness when you actually see a coffin for the first time. The police and security services are steeling themselves for what is to happen next Monday when the Queen’s body is to be taken in procession from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey. Around 500 dignitaries from around the world will attend the Queen’s funeral. For most countries, the invitation extends to the head of state plus a guest. Apparently, President Biden is going to be allowed to bring ‘The Beast’ heavily armoured car to transport him around London but it has been let known that many other Heads of state will not necessarily be allowed to bring their own transport for the funeral but will need to be escorted from place in buses. Some of them may never have been in a bus in their lives so I can imagine that this may prove to be a massive psychological shock for many.

Now for the political talking point of the day. Some protesters have held up a sheet of paper bearing the words ‘Not my king’ The police seem to have taken the view that this constitutes offensive behaviour so some more streetwise protesters of a republican disposition have taken to holding up blank sheets of paper. The police have often taken the view that is within the rights of individuals to protest and have generally not intervened – which I personally think is the right cause of action. But the BBC have noted that a young barrister was arrested by the police when he was holding up a blank sheet of paper because what he might write upon it. This really is police action that crosses the line in the wrong direction. The young barrister when interviewed said that even if he did write words like ‘Not my King’, he would have been within his rights and the case law is quite clear on this point. However, he conceded that he would not hold up a piece of paper upon which words had been written if it was actually at a funeral itself – in other words, he conceded that there is a place for legitimate protest. The Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire argued that the police might intervene for the safety of the protesters themselves if the reaction of the bystanders was such that they turned a highly emotional state into a physical attack upon the protester. In this case, are the police right to intervene to protect an individual or is this itself an attack upon our democratic rights? A court may well be called upon to decide the case of the young barrister quoted above but courts are not infallible, particularly when emotions are running high.

This morning turned out to be quite a busy morning. I had received an email from a close friend of Meg’s Uncle Ken informing us definitively of the date of her uncles’s funeral in two weeks time today. We thought long and hard about the logistics of our visit and have now decided to make the journey there and back in a single day. One of the factors that lay behind our decision was the fact that en-route to Colwyn Bay, there is a fabulous restaurant set in a country park just off the A55 dual carriage way. This means that if we set off at a reasonable time, we can have a good meal and a rest in a location which we have used on several occasions before. Then, we can progress to the crematorium well fed and refreshed, after which we have the crematorium business at 2.45, a Service of Remembrance in Old Colwyn and a reception to be held in the adjacent Methodist Hall (what a good idea!), after which we can strike for home. With a bit of luck, some of the heavy traffic will be off the motorways by then and Meg can sleep on the way back. The day after the funeral, I am scheduled to go by train to meet our friends in Oxfordshire so I am choosing whichever options turn out to be the least tiring. This morning, we collected our newspaper by car and popped into Waitrose to buy some tea and then hit the road for two more errands. The first of these was to get a parcel into a local ‘One Stop‘ shop which is the preferred method of returning items and this has worked out as intended. I have already had an email telling me that my refund has been issued and is in the system. Finally, I went to the railway station to pick up my railway tickets for my trip to Oxfordshire and this, too, worked without a hitch. Then as it was raining ‘cats and dogs’ we made our way for home and drank our elevenses in front of the TV.

This afternoon after lunch, we were engaged in watching some of the funeral rituals for our departed Queen. The most important event of the day was going to be a procession at a very slow pace from Holyroodhouse to St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. This takes place along the ‘Royal Mile’ which is a little steep and narrow in places and I was particularly enthralled by how well the various actors payed their parts. In particular, two policewomen mounted on horseback led off the procecession at a very slow i.e. walking pace, made this slow so that the Queen’s sons and daugther could walk behind the coffin. Evidently, the horses had to progress at a very slow pace and I was praying that nothing would go wrong, which indeed it did not. Then it came to the turn of the pallbearers who have to bear the coffin containing the Queen on their shoulders and having to negotiate steps on the way. One could only admire the concentration on the faces of the young soldiers who must have been thinking to themselves that this was one of the most important moments of their lives when the eyes of the world’s media was upon them and they could not afford to make even a simple mistake or stumble. This too was performed flawlessly and I am sure they were all mightily relieved when they had performed their duties without a hitch. Then there was a special service in St. Giles, not a funeral service, to commemorate the life of the Queen and one is always interested to see what music is played and what symbolism is deployed. For example, the wreath on the Queen’s coffin was made by flowers picked from the Balmoral estate. Afer the service was over, there was an interesting little discussion about the fact that the Queen had actually died in Scotland which is probably the place in which she would ideally wish to die. An official biographer, Penny Junor, was interviewed and she made the interesting point that if the Queen had died at Windsor or at Sandringham, then the whole funeral arrangements would have been so much more London-centric. This way, by dying in Scotland which she loved and where you might say her roots lie (The Queen Mother, a Bowes-Lyon, was an aristrocratic Scottish family), the Scots were well and truly incorporated into the whole of the unfolding rituals.

After yesterday’s political blog, I did a little more research and discovered the following opinion on the ‘Quora’ website. This was an opinion that Macmillan was so keen to stop Rab Butler becoming the Prime Minister because he thought he would far too liberal a prime minister for the Conservative party. At the same time, Reginald Maudling was adjudged to be too ‘light-weight’ and Quinton Hogg too ‘populist’ and hence with a divided parliamentary party (sounds familiar?), Alec Douglas-Home was ‘helped’ to emerge. The whole question now is whether the Queen was badly advised or whether she made a large (and not well publicised) constitutional blunder.

Today being a Sunday, I got up fairly early and collected our copy of the Sunday Times before settling down for a viewing of the Laura Kuenssberg show, otherwise entitled ‘Sunday’. Normal politics is suspended but she had a panel of three ex-Prime Ministers (Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Teresa May) to discuss the developments of the last week and, in particular, how the new King Charles III will define his role. Of course, all monarchs effect subtle changes but there are indications that King Charles may develop a more ‘slimmed down’ monarchy. Apart from the working and very hard-working members of the Royal family, there are quite a lot of hangers-on and flunkery so perhaps a more slimmed down monarchy fits the spirit of the times. After we had breakfasted, we looked at some of the progress of the Queen’s coffin as it emerged from the gates of Balmoral and started its journey through various Scottish towns and cities, including Aberdeen and Dundee, before its destination place of Holyroodhouse Palace in Edingburgh. Meg and I walked down to the park today and engaged one or two of our generation in discussion of the Queen’s passing. We were informed that that might be a display of flowers in the park’s bandstand so we made a detour on our way home to witness this. Many of the messages on the bunches of flowers were written by quite young children, interesting in itself, and apparently there is to be a book of condolence opened in the Town Hall centre as well as online.

This afternoon, I was determined to get the lawns cut as they were looking a little ragged and we have had a fair amount of rain in the last week. This got done with no threat of rain – but I notice that the damsons are getting more and more plump. Just before I went out to cut the lawns, I had a quick flash through the Sunday Times discovered something which has puzzled me for years and is now seeing the light of day (or, more accurately, may be re-emerging).

I have been interested in politics since 1963 when I was aged 18 and and important event took place then. The Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, resigned through ill-health and was succeeded by an aristocrat member of the House of Lords, Alec Douglas-Home. How did this happen? The process then in place was that the next leader would ’emerge’ but the processes by which this happened were secretive. It is said that monarchs exercise no political power but that was not absolutely the case in 1963 because constitutionally, the Queen could send for whatever politician could form a stable government that could command a majority in the House of Commons. Normally, this would be the leader of the largest party but in the case of a leader who has resigned, the monarch had a degree of latitude which politician to send for. There were three outstanding MPs at the time – Rab Butler, the deputy leader, Reginald Maudling and Quinton Hogg (later Lord Hailsham) who was very popular in the constituencies. So how did Alec Douglas-Home emerge? Harold Macmillan who was of patrician stock sent out a lot of the junior whips with loaded questions to ask of MPs to get the result that he wanted – Lord Home. Having resigned, the Queen went to visit Harold Macmillan on his sick-bed (which was not constitutionally necessary) and although he had resigned by then, he advised the Queen to send for Lord Home. There was no constitutional necessity to follow the advice or recommendations of a recently resigned Prime Minister but the Queen did so, even though in the car going back to Buckingham Palace from the hospital, the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, advised the Queen that Macillans’s advice was ‘non-constitutional’ But the Queen knew Lord Home as a fellow aristocratic Scottish land owner and great friend of the Bowes-Lyons (the Queen Mother’s family) and so the rest is history. The author Ben Pimlott is quoted by Tim Shipman that Elizabeth’s decision ‘in effect to collude with Macmillan’s scheme for blocking the deputy premier (Rab Butler) must be counted the biggest political misjudment of her reign’ Interestingly enough, Enoch Powell said later ‘the Queen was a victim of a violation of the constitution. It is unthinkable that Macmillan should resign and tender advice on his successor’ Now all of this might have been documented and might be well known to political historians and constitutional experts but I certainly do not think it is widely known. Moreover, who is going to highlight all of this just after the Queen’s demise? Perhaps to criticise the Queen whilst she was alive might have been unthinkable but to do it just after her death is unseemly but it is a story that is fascinating. Incidentally, The Conservative party having lost the elections of 1964 and 1966 revised their procedures so that the notion that a leader should ’emerge’ from a ‘magic circle’ be confined to history and was judged to be not a worthy way to select a leader of a moden political party.

So today is very much the day after the day before – inevitably, it will seem as a bit of an anticlimax after the very enjoyable night out that we had with our friends when we had a communal wedding anniversary celebratory meal in our favourite restaurant near Kidderminster. This morning, as it was the first time it had ever been broadcast, we saw the ‘Accessions Council’ which is when the Privy Council formally declares Charles III to be king. There is some debate as to what the new era may be called – ‘Eizabethan’ era is easily derived from ‘Elizabeth’ but in the case of King Charles III we may have to go back to a Latin root for the name. It may well be that the term ‘Carolean’ comes into vogue but it might be a case of seeing whether a consensus is arrived at amongst the modern historians. Meg and I made our way to the park again today when we met with our two park regulars – our University of Birmingham friend and Seasoned World Traveller. As you might expect, we were swopping stories about what had engaged our interest in this transition period. We now know that the the funeral of the Queen has been fixed for a week on Monday. In the meanwhile, the airwaves are filled with ‘filler’ type programmes but this afternoon there is a programme on life in the 1950’s when the Queen ascended to the throne. I certainly can remember the music of the era, pre-rock and roll with recording artists like Dean Martin and Perry Como and where at school children were regularly hit with a jam spoon not necessarily for being naughty but for giving the wrong answers in our recitation of arithmetic tables. Being born in 1945, I was just at the start of what was known as ‘the bulge’ which typically occurs when there is a rapid increase in the birthrate after any major war. In the case of the UK, the peak of this bulge was in 1948 and of course the bulge hit the primary schools in 1953, the secondary schools in 1959, the universities in 1966, the housing market in about 1973 and then, of course, the retirement at the end of working life in about 2008. At university, we studied some demography as part of a course in ‘Social Statistics’ and I was always fascinated by the way in which demography affects our social lives as a kind of unseen force, a little like gravity. Having said that, I found my ‘Social Statistics’ one of the most informative and interesting parts of my university education.

At the moment, there seems to be wall-to-wall coverage of various aspects of the succession – and I have to tell myself that we are only two days into these events, the Queen having died on Thursday. I am not sure how more of this I can take, given that it is days yet even before the funeral and wherever one looks, there is blanket coverage of one aspect or another of the succession of the new King. These programmes are all very interesting and admittedly, events like this have not been seen for seventy years but I wonder whether the public should be given a little respite from it all. Today, the TV Guide to our copy of The Times seems to have missed out, so we are relying upon the EPG (Electronic programme Guide) to have a quick quide to some alternative viewing. Saturday is the day when we attend our weekly church service and after that, Meg and I feel the need for a little diversion. Although many sporting events have been cancelled, the cricket Test Match between England and South Africa have had one day off but I think are playing again today. It is being left to each sport whether fixtures are cancelled or not and in the case of football, some comments have been made that football matches have been cancelled as a mark of respect, but perhaps the opportunity could have been taken for a mass singing of the ‘revised’ national anthem and this might have filled some emotional needs. It might be stating the obvious but who is ‘looking after the shop’ whilst all of this ourpouring of grief is going on. We have to remember that we have not had any ‘normal’ politics all during the summer and were desperately looking forward to a new government, albeit shaped by the new Prime Minister but now ‘normal’ politics has been suspended for another two weeks or at least until the funeral has been held and the official period of mourning come to an end. Whilst it is important that the succession of the monarch is handled correctly, government has to go on as there are no doubt critical decisions that are still be taken concerning the way that our fuel bills are gong to be alleviated. After the Liz Truss statement on Tuesday last, there were still quite a lot of unanswered questions, not least an estimate of the total cost and these questions have not gone away.

The news of the Queen’s death came through to us just after I had completed yesterday’s blog and of course, this made it a momentous day. The fact that the Commons and the other members of the Royal Family moved with such alacrity made me wonder whether there was a coded message such as ‘London bridge is falling down’ as ‘London Bridge’ is the codename for the event of the Queen’s death and all of its consequeneces. As the Prime Minister was informed at about 4.30pm of the Queen’s demise, we can assume that the Queen herself actually died at about 4.00pm or even earlier. The strained faces of the members of the Royal Family when their limousines conveyed them from Aberdeen Airport to Balmorral indicates that they were probably already appraised of the grim news. I think a whole swirl of emotions presents itself at a time like this. First of all, there is the inevitable sadness which most of the poulation undoubtedly feels. But a second emotion is surely one that recognises the incredible devotion to duty and years of service given by the monarch. After all old people do die and 96 years is a ripe old age (my own mother died at the age of 95 and her death certificate merely read ‘Extreme Old Age’ as cause of death). As I was aged about 7 years old when George VI died, then for all of my adult life I have been familiar with Queen Elizabeth II, her images on our stamps, her cipher on Post Boxes, a national anthem of ‘God Save the Queen’ and so on. But, as of yesterday, we now have King Charles III and it now sounds less unfamiliar than it did yesterday. Late on last night, I indulged myself in watching a facinating programme made by Channel 4 which was entitled someting like, ‘The Queen: Power, Politics and Prime Ministers’ or similar. From this I learned that the Queen quite enjoyed her weekly audience with Harold Wilson, the Labout leader, but relationships with Margaret Thatcher were a lot more strained (‘who was going to be Queen Bee after all?’)According to this programme, the Queen and Thatcher fell out with each quite badly over two issues. The first of these was the Commonwealth and the Commonweath desire to impose sanctions against the Union of South Africe as the UK was the only country to oppose sanctions in order to bring about the downfall of the system of ‘apartheid’ The second source of disagreement was the whole Miners’s dispute of the 1970’s. The Queen apparently did not buy into the rhetoric of ‘the enemy within’ and did not enjoy the sight of watching the members of working class communities in the North and the Midlands quite savaegly beaten in defence of ther jobs. The Queen did recognise the transformation that Margaret Thatcher had wrought on British society and later gave her the appropriate honours and recognition.

Today is the long anticipated day which is our wedding anniversary, now that we have completed 55 years under the yoke. We had various plans for the day and hoped that the weather would not get in the way, which fortunately it did not. The day started with our domestic help arriving on a slightly different day this week and naturally we exchanged our reactions to the Queen’s death with each other. We then went down by car to collect our copy of The Times which, in common woth all the other newspapers, had published special supplements commemorating the Queen’s life in pictures. I also bought a copy of the Daily Mirror as I noticed from last night’s TV that they had produced an absolutely stunning profile of the Queen not in full regalia but just in profile with the simple message ‘Thank you’. I thought this to be an example of photo journalism at its very best sand I was pleased to buy this edition for posterity. As we had previously planned, we went down to our usual park bench but taking with us a bottle of prosecco and some cupcakes. We invited any of our acquaintances to help us celebrate and/or assist in a toast to the Queen’ memory and all of this worked as intended. I regaled the dog walkers with the following little story, gleaned from the internet. Apparently, the Queen and her entourage spent a miserable Christmas in Sandringham in 2003 as Priness Anne had taken along with her her English bulldog and this had attacked, and subsequently killed, the eldest of the Queen’s corgis. This had, understandably, put quite a damper on that year’s festivities.

The highlight of the day was when we with our two sets of friends from down the road, we all went out to one of our favourite restaurants where we all had a meal together because, by happy coincidence, all of our wedding anniversries fall within a week of each other. I had bought each of our friends a personalised anniversary cake and we were delighted that the hotel allowed us to take one of these cakes into the restaurant and consume it as our dessert, supplying us with some cream to help it down. One of our friends had so kindly organised a taxi for us there and back so that we could collectively enjoy a little alcohol with our meal to make it all a really enjoyable, and memorable,occasion.