Laughing Queen

How lovely to see the photographs of the Queen laughing at Royal Ascot! It’s no secret that gee-gees of the competitive persuasion are one of HM’s favourite things (her equivalent of the late Queen Mother’s teeth - a quality which makes the working-class think ‘O, she’s one of us!) and as she missed it last year for the first time in her long reign due to the Covid her delight must be twice the usual measure.

The last time the Queen attended Ascot with Prince Philip was in 2017; he died in the April of this year. Our most recent memory of her was at his funeral, masked and alone, refusing to sit with her family because she knew the price she pays for her privilege (anointed by the Lord, allegedly) is to deny herself human weakness. This was a veritable smorgasbord of sorrow-opportunities for those people I branded ‘tear-leaders’ - groups of ghouls who congregate on social media to work themselves into a tizzy over the death of celebrities, no matter how old, which rose to a ululating frenzy earlier this year with their social media pleas begging for the centenarian Captain Tom Moore not to die. This lead me to wonder exactly what they wanted for the estimable old soldier who had lived as rich a life as it is possible for one to imagine; to be an UnDead, some war-hero version of Dracula, grimly plodding on forever around his garden and never knowing eternal rest?

It’s not just the rich and famous who are the recipients of pointless grieving. I recently heard a young woman complaining of PTSD – because her gran died. She’s started up a podcast inspired by it. But that’s what grans do – they die on you. Don’t trust them! Which brings us back to the Grandmother Of The Nation. At the time of the funeral I wrote ‘We can only imagine how much sorrow she must now feel. But it will remain purely in our imaginations, because the queen will never complain, knowing as she does that if the under-examined life is not worth living, equally the over-examined life becomes half a life, once the world has finished picking the bones of it on primetime TV.’ We can imagine the depth of her grief - but we can see before us in the Ascot photographs the proof of how quickly and efficiently she has processed it. She really is hard as nails, and that's a compliment. When I was young I thought that the more emotional one was, the more one experienced life - but now I believe that life can never be fully enjoyed if we lead with our emotions. They should be a side dish or a starter - not the main course.

When my parents died, I was sad, mourned them for a few months, and then bounced back as happy as I’d been before. The same is true of my son’s suicide, though that took a year. I loathe the language which surrounds the entirely natural and inevitable state of bereavement; ‘in bits’, ‘destroyed’ ‘you never get over it.’ But you do - unless you choose not to. Perhaps religious faith makes all the difference? It’s funny that many atheists believe they’ve thrown off inhibiting shackles and embraced life joyously by rejecting religion; the happiest people I know are Christians while some of the worst miseries I know are non-believers, especially when it comes to the business of turning up one’s toes.

Moping indefinitely is often an inappropriate response to death; when a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is gratitude. And considering the recent digs from the Gruesome Grabication Twosome about the bad mental health of the Windsors, I know who I think is the more mentally healthy; this old lady who has bottled up her feelings all her life, rather than her whinging, emoting, monstrously privileged grandson who really is neither use nor ornament. Lord bless you, ma'am! (Still a Republican though.)