The main advantage of going in at the weekend is that Terry, our MD, is always in the office on Saturday mornings, and it’s a good chance to get to talk to him informally without any of the other directors being around. As my own division of the agency (run by Ian) is on increasingly shaky grounds I have decided to work most Saturday mornings. That way if the axe ever falls Terry will at least know who I am, and might find me a job upstairs.
About six people were in the office, including Douglas (Account Executive on Rachel’s team, both of them under the ultimate control of Val). Douglas is mixed-race English-Chinese, slightly less than average height, athletic build (used to be a student player for London Scottish rugby club - this was some years ago although he talks as if it were recent). He always wears a formal suit, even on dress-down Fridays.
Most of the morning I spent upstairs, talking to Douglas (neither of us had much work to do apart from planning a new business campaign for Rachel). Douglas plays rugby union in the winter and watches rugby league in the summer. He was going to a rugby league match that evening and urged me to go along.
I couldn’t go to a rugby match in a suit (I suppose I could, but it would look conspicuous), so we went out mid-morning to buy some new clothes (buying new clothes is one of Douglas’s chief recreations). We went to Gianni Ricci, which is not really my sort of place. I broke my resolution not to wear jeans after the age of thirty.
Walking along Piccadilly, we could hear music from Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards Parade. Douglas had never seen this, so I suggested going down to Green Park to see the guns. The time was about 11.30, so there was no hurry to get back to the office (Terry would already have left for his usual long drawn-out Saturday lunch with his cronies).
Above: we walked down as far as Buckingham Palace, stopping short of the big crowds forming in front of the building. Through some side railings we could see the Irish Guards (on the left, with blue hackles) and the Coldstream Guards (on the right, with red hackles). More and more people were arriving so we moved away before the crush began.
Above: we walked into Green Park where we stopped to look at these smart-looking horses - even under the trees the heat of the day was intense, which made me wonder how the horses were coping.
Above: soldiers from the Royal Horse Artillery were waiting on the edge of the park, as the crowd noise from the Mall grew louder and a mood of expectation slowly increased.
Above: a military band was playing Elgar marches in the dappled sunlight under the trees (the dappled sunlight hasn’t come out in this photograph, which demonstrates what a rotten photographer I am, or alternatively what a rotten camera I have, or alternatively again how incompetent I am at using what is supposed to be a fairly good camera).
Above: the guard stood to attention as in the road to our left the guns were drawn up - loud cacophony of jangling harnesses, bugle sounds, clattering hooves.
Above: we went to stand at the edge of the cordoned-off area, where we had a perfect view into the park. We were among the first to take our places, next to an antipodean photographer with a hi-tech camera that looked like some kind of weapon (it was inspected by a burly policewoman who wanted to make sure it was just a camera). Then the guns were brought round into the park, looking exactly like the illustration Bringing Up The Guns in a pictorial book I have about the Boer War.
Above: within minutes of the guns arriving a large crowd formed all along the edge of the park. We had a perfect view along the line of guns, but just at the last minute a camera crew came and stood in front of us. “Trust the bloody BBC” said the antipodean photographer in tones of considerable disgust, not bothering whether the BBC could hear him or not (I suppose he was entitled to be miffed, having come from the other side of the world to take his photographs).
Above: possibly the BBC did hear him, as they moved to one side. We saw the guns go off with loud “bang” noises (there’s no other way I can describe the sound), the gun-smoke overpowering the fresh summer smell of the park. “They aim at the Iranian embassy” someone in the row behind us said.
Above: after the forty-one gun salute we walked back down to Buckingham Palace, standing right at the edge of the crowds (I know from experience that once you get caught in a crowd you can get stuck for ages). The Royal Family came out onto the palace balcony - I have magnified this photograph several times, so apologies for the blurred image. You can see the Queen in turquoise, with the Duke of Edinburgh next to her in a red uniform, plus the Duchess of Cornwall and various others.
We seemed to have got into a group of Australians, all of whom were cheering and shouting out things (which the Queen cannot have heard). Even Douglas cheered and waved (I hadn’t known he was a royalist). We kept having to walk backwards to get out of the crowd as more and more people arrived.
From an anthropological point of view the sight was extremely interesting. On that balcony we were looking at the most ancient and basic form of human organisation, preserved intact in the British Isles for at least one and a half thousand years. The Queen, being a direct lineal descendant of Ecgbert first king of the English, still holds the titles and powers of the prehistoric Bretwaldas (combining the three elements of Saxon kingship - supreme law-maker, supreme warlord, supreme priest).
No doubt UNESCO will eventually declare the British monarchy part of its World Heritage cultural programme.
Above: everyone looked up for the RAF flypast. Several waves of symmetrically-arranged aircraft flew along the Mall and over our heads. A woman nearby began bellowing “That’s my son, that’s my son…” and waved frantically at the planes (already heading out towards Surrey).
More on the Bretwaldas (but the author seems to be a bit tendentious so treat this with caution): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretwalda
No comments:
Post a Comment