M4463

M4463 Male train driver, married, living in London aged 582nd June.I don’t know why the whole of the media assumes that everyone is in favour of the royal family. I believe them to be an expensive anachronism. Which other country in Europe makes such a big thing out of royalty? None of them.Today I watched the one o’clock news on BBC tv and the queen was given a 41 gun salute. I thought it was an absurd number especially when I noticed that it was delivered using only three guns which had to be continually reloaded.. Presumably that was because of budget cuts but I have to say that it looked absurd: the sort of thing we used to mock banana republics for. The queen couldn’t even be there because she was watching the racing at Epsom so how much did it matter anyway?When I went to work there were loads of people on the train I was driving covered in union jacks and having a whale of a time celebrating the diamond jubilee. I can remember being more sympathetic to the silver jubilee in 1977 but that was before a plethora of royal scandals: the Diana debacles, the prince of Wales’ adultery, the duke of Edinburgh’s increasingly xenophobic pronouncements about foreign people - slitty-eyed Chinese etc. The whole idea of a monarchy has become ridiculous and I worry that around half the country has been taken in by it.3rd JuneToday was the parade of ships down the Thames in honour of the Jubilee. It rained for the whole time and some people had queued outside Battersea Park from dawn in order that they could get a good view of the queen. Afterwards sixty people went to hospital because of things like hypothermia and exposure and altogether medics had to deal with five hundred people suffering from the effects of the cold. The commentator on the radio said that the royal family was better than an elected president because they were above politics and always took care not to favour one side over another. Just because someone says it doesn’t make all of this true. It’s well known that they’re all ultra-conservative in their views and why wouldn’t they be? It’s all about self preservation. I have noticed a few cars with union jacks fixed to the doors but not many. I would think that it’s not even one per cent of people who are doing this. I’m afraid that one of them is my friend Derek. I don’t talk to him about royalty because I don’t want to hurt his feelings.4th June The big news of the day is that the Duke of Edinburgh has been taken to a hospitalised due to a bladder infection. This is a result of yesterday when he stood in the rain for three hours. I would have thought that any celebration involving someone in their nineties should include a heated car seat and a rug but then what do I know? He went to the King Edward V11 Hospital for Officers and the queen had to soldier on with all the waving and hand -shaking without him. Last night there was a huge concert at Buckingham Palace which I didn’t see because I was working but on the radio there was a report that mass confusion broke out when the band played the second verse of the national anthem and no-one knew the words.There was a woman struggling with multiple bags of shopping outside Sainsbury’s today. Her daughter looked up at her.‘But don’t you like the queen, mummy?’Impatient look from woman. ‘it’s not that I don’t like her: it’s just that I don’t care.’Cue for the little girl to pout.I think that it’s this way for a lot of people. These are stressful times and many don’t have the time because they’re busy trying to cope. Surely there’s something slightly distasteful about all that privilege being on show while a lot of people have lost their jobs and even more are struggling to keep their heads above water?5th JuneToday there was a service of thanksgiving for the queen’s reign. I think it was at Westminster Abbey though I can’t be sure. A small group of republican protesters were shouted down by people bleating ‘God save the queen’. Then about three hundred selected people had lunch with the queen There are so many members of the royal family that each table had one of them sitting on it.And that was it. It all fizzled out. I have to say that I was under whelmed by every day of it. Thank goodness that the European Football Championships start on Friday.