Ambergris, Civet, Rose and Benzoin

 I like weird old things. That's kind of my raison d'etre these days and, as I turn into a weird old thing myself, it looks something like self-acceptance. So, I should have been enjoying the frenzy of scraping morbidity that has followed the Queen's death. A hush has fallen, or been draped over the nation, a shadow across the land, trimmed in ermine. The BBC has been rolling out every last piece of footage of the Queen from her 70 year reign. She has seen fifteen Prime Ministers come and go - there is 101 years between the births of her first, Churchill and her last, Liz Truss (Liz Truss is the Prime Minister!I'm not shitting you - that happened, like, only this week!) The memory of her "trademark radiant smile" has been dinned into us like Latin homework. We were reminded where she kept her marmalade sandwich. 

The tone has been hushed and reverent, a sepulchral Nicholas Witchell visibly disintegrating in real time, like the last few frames of a Dracula movie. QVC, the shopping channel, has shut down out of respect, and Britain is now facing the very real possibility of a diamonique mountain. They've cancelled the football - which I don't care about - but seems a bit strange - they didn't do that when her Dad died. They cancelled the Proms too, which seems incredibly counter intuitive. I'd have really have liked to have seen a subdued, respectful, introspective Proms. A few Arvo Part pieces. That sort of thing. Or do they just play "English" composers, like Handel. Ha. 

The news footage has been fascinating as always. Popular delusions and the madness of crowds is as English as Gin Lane or the offside rule, and her Majesty's subjects never disappoint. The flowers, the teddy bears, the aimless, disconsolate wandering about. The inarticulate vox pops. They don't know what it is they're feeling - they can't tell you. They talk vaguely about pageantry, about service, about the nation, about their parents and grandparents, about the link to their own history. They can't put it into words, but I don't disbelieve them. They mean it, man. This, whatever this is, has profoundly affected them. They're in mental disarray, they've been properly pole-axed. It's grief. The insanity of grief. Tongue-numbing, brain-slapping grief. They probably don't know why they feel obliged to drive to the nearest place that has anything to do with Royalty (in Basingstoke people might like to go to the site of the AA building which she opened in 1974, or the Technical College where she cut the ribbon in 1960) armed with fluffy toys and floral tributes, only to mill about looking sad and unable to explain why. It's like a Nigel Kneale story. A primal need, banked well below rational thought, some ur-Englishness, the need to mourn and venerate the embodiment of Britannia.

It is very England that has been scarred, and this could be a mortal blow. People talk about continuity and it is true - she was the reigning monarch for half the Twentieth Century. She missed out on the wars - though we know she was an ambulance driver in the second one - but she was there for the Beatles, for the death of English cinema, for the three day week, The Troubles, for Thatcher, yuppies, AIDS, pole-tax riots, the destruction of the high-street, the gentrification of the city centres, the opening of food banks, the seven pound pint, Brexit and Boris Johnson and the death of truth. She was a link to the last time England liked itself. The last time it thought, "Fuck the Suez Crisis - we've got "Strawberry Fields Forever." 

What does England, and the UK have to look forward to? What will the Carolean Age have to offer us, other than the predicted death of the planet? At least Charles has environmental interests. Maybe he'll start throwing his weight around. The King has no real power, but he does have a lot to say. He might kick off. Though he's 73. The fight's probably gone now. 

I watch the scenes on telly. The outfits, all emblazoned with ER, which will have to go - Charles is using CIIIR, are in full effect. Old white men in massive fur hats, and red and yellow pantaloons, carrying enormous gold sceptres, and walking very slowly. I should love it. It looks like the end of Robin Redbreast. Pomp and Circumstance. It's mad, Medieval, a tradition stretching back a thousand years, with all sorts of weird bits of business seeping into it - gaudy tributaries meeting a broad, deep river. The Queen was anointed with oil for her Coronation. The recipe for the Anointing Oil contains oils of orange, roses, cinnamon, musk and ambergris. Usually a batch is made to last a few Coronations, but in May 1941 a bomb hit the Deanery destroying the phial, so a new batch was made. Presumably Charles will get the same batch as his mother. See, I love all this stuff. The service is fundamentally the same one used for King Edgar at Bath in 973. How cool is that? 

Very, and yet...

I find it all profoundly depressing. Susan badly damaged her back this week, and I've been terrified she'll fall or tear something and do lasting damage, so I've been panicked all week. It was the first anniversary of my mother's death. I've spent the week writing an essay about a friend who died, and whose funeral I'll be attending in England next week. The fact that he'll be buried at the same time as a woman twice his age is truly galling. I've been to a lot of funerals in the last year, funerals of people I actually know. For all the symbolic value of the death of a monarch, she was an abstract presence in my life. A face on a banknote. Someone whose I head I licked when I wanted to send a letter. 

More than anything I'm worried about the cost. The cost of all this mummery. The cost of a new coronation. The cost of re-branding everything. The cost of new money, new stamps. New everything for Brand Windsor. Earlier this week, an unimaginable distance in time now, as this black hole of mourning has sucked everything into it, the Prime Minister (Liz Truss! Imagine!) made her inaugural speech to the commons on the subject of The Cost of Living Crisis, where she capped to price of energy to £2500 this winter, and refused to issue a windfall tax to the energy companies who are raking in enormous profits and whom she used to work for and who generously donated to her campaign. No one remembers this now. Because we're burying a woman who never felt the winter cold in her life. 

Actually, Balmoral was probably pretty drafty in the winter months. But they like that, don't they, posh people. The wind the rattling the green glass in 400 year old lead frames. 

Worst of all has been the commentary. Not Huw Edwards and Clive Myrie - the knighthood's in the bag, lads. I mean the commentary encountered on social media, the greatest horror of the age, that howling vortex of the id, that consequence-free portal where your lizard brain jabs away unencumbered by the social contract. This week has seen simultaneous hand-wringing and finger pointing, not easy to pull off, a ton of people posting the lamest, thickest jokes imaginable, and the shrillest, most sentimental magical thinking. At the moment my twitter is trending both "FFS" and "It's a disgrace". Obviously living in Northern Ireland, I'm seeing a lot of anti-English feeling - as usual - but expressed in the most bovine and lumpen ways. Call me a cunt lads, but at least do it WELL. Think about it. Maybe express your SECOND thought for a change. And maybe look up the feed to see if it has already been posted a dozen times. It has. 

The sheer fatigue of it. And another week to go, at least. Meanwhile I have to go to the burial of a friend. Someone I actually knew. Someone I spent some really good times with. Real grief. Real human grief, that doesn't need to be hammered in to the chalk cliffs of Albion.