Teeming on Thames

Well, that was - er -entertaining.

Here in the village it's been a great Jubilee weekend so far.  Special themed quiz on Friday (we won!  Award that woman the Order of the Corgi) and there was an afternoon tea for 140 people on Saturday.  They told me it was 140, but I washed up and I reckoned it was five hundred and they all used more than one teacup.

Yesterday we had a lovely morning services with hymns from every decade of The Queen's reign and thoughts about what the church in Britain has been doing over that time, and the direction it's going in now.   We followed this with a lunch and a party, all presided over by a cardboard cutout of ER II.  (You could stand behind her, stick your arm out, and do the wave.  Regrettably I capsized her while lifting down high chairs from the stage, but I picked her up, apologised, and curtsied, and nobody's put me in the Tower yet.)

In the afternoon we settled down to watch the Thames Pageant.  Some bright spark had decided that the way to do something magnificent for the Jubilee was to amass lots of little boats of all kinds and have a procession on the Thames.  The Royal Family were on this very beautiful boat thing, which pottled along the water and got saluted by everyone.

There were some nice things about this.  It was a homage to the little boats that rescued the British Army at Dunkirk, and some of those original little ships were there.  They had representations from all sorts of clubs, sports people, working boats, and so on.  The crowds turned out.

So did the rain.  It was a cold day and when the rain arrived, as it did in force, it hammered down.  The whole thing lasted something like four hours, and the commentators were running out of things to talk about.  Frankly there were few highlights, and the queen gave it her best as she always does, BUT she was on her feet all that time, and looked nithered with cold.  Did nobody consider what sort of a demand this was on a lady of 86?  Was this suppose to honour her, or make her wish herself home by the fire with a warm corgi?  God love her, I wanted somebody to bring her a cup of tea.

It was worse for the singers from the Royal College of Music, who stood bare-headed and soaked to the skin, but still smiled bravely as they belted out Land of Hope and Glory.   Paramedics were kept busy looking after those who were getting hypothermic, including some from the boats.

Ninety year old Prince Phil appeared to enjoy it a lot - he's a naval man after all - but today, he's not at the Buckingham Palace Party.  He's in hospital, suffering from a bladder infection.  The long afternoon standing by the Thames won't have caused it, I know.  But it can't have helped.