There is a long list of things beyond my feeblish comprehension. Close to the top of it, however, is how so many Britons – a people renowned for its healthy scepticism and refusal to blindly bow to authority – buy into the bollocks that is the Royal Family.
“Anyone else consider these jubilee celebrations obscene?” I posted to Facebook from my phone in the early hours of last Tuesday, at the end of my tether following days of Sky News sycophancy.
“Only the mentally ill” was the first response I woke up to – though, it should be clarified, it came from a teacher at Hasmonean High School for Boys – and it was followed by a chorus of disapproval, topped by a clearly peeved private school and Cambridge educated cousin:
“People who misuse the word “obscene” in circumstances like this are always attempting to express extreme, usually puritanical moral disapproval of some activity enjoyed by others, in which they are not included.”
True, I had not been included in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee festivities, but the “extreme . . . puritanical moral disapproval” was, in this case, clearly not mine. I had merely posed a question.
In Hendon, I would often stare at our “daily” (my mother’s doublespeak for cleaner), who cut a not dissimilar figure to the Queen, and ponder how very different her life would have been had she only been born a Windsor and not a Hart.
I know which one my money’s on!
And I still imagine that the Queen must laugh herself to sleep at nights, not quite believing her luck. The woman is unremarkable in nearly every respect. And Mrs. Hart, to the best of my knowledge, did not have (to varying degrees of allegedness): an adulterous husband and son, and another son and a grandson (with a penchant for dressing up as a Nazi) who were illegitimate.
Should we even respect this dysfunctional, inbred clan, never mind look up to it? It is fitting that Madness played so central a role in the Diamond Jubilee Concert because, if anyone is really “mentally ill,” it is surely those who believe that the Family are actually deserving of their status, privileges and patronage.
Moreover, those of us who live in – or at least care about – Israel cannot overlook the fact that Her Majesty has visited more than 130 countries over the past 60 years, but – in spite of being Supreme Governor of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith – never once the Holy Land. She must not, of course, offend those darling Arabs so beloved by her Foreign Office.
But seeing all those upper-class twerps bawling “God Save the Queen” from their Epsom boxes last week just made me long for Johnny Rotten. God save you, Ma’am . . .
