We’ve been enjoying watching the amazing ceremonies and pageantry of the Coronation weekend back in the UK. Can’t help feeling proud that our country is so good at staging this kind of event. The organisation it must take is staggering.
The new TV system has been amazing. Watching in total real time without any buffering or the dreaded spinning egg timer. And over the same wifi connections as ever.
Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed the actual Coronation ceremony. Fascinating to see aspects of a ceremony that goes back thousands of years – A King humbling himself on his knees wearing just a shirt, the mystery of the annointment screened from all but the priests, the post-annointment transformation, the presentation of symbolic gifts….. and then the modernising touches and the visible multi-racialism of the audience representing the rest of the country…. I wish the commentators explained some of that in more depth for modern audiences rather than prattling on about superficialities….. It was something to long be remembered. Maybe the only one we will ever see. I wasn’t born when Queen Elizabeth was crowned. Bob was, but was too young to remember…. he might remember a street party….. My parents went up on the train to London from Cornwall with my grandad and sat out on the pavement to watch it. My dad was only 24, not long back from National Service in Malaya, even so, London was a long way from Truro. Must have been a great adventure. A different world in so many ways. When I look at the photos of that not-long post war world, everyone looks thin, rather shabby and much older than their years. We were a lucky 1950s generation to have escaped those hardships and our children born int the 1990s would find the world of their grandparents intolerably hard.
We watched the whole thing – I made tray lunch and we had a bottle of fizz for toasting the King and ourselves. A really good day. On Monday evening we are going to a Coronation BBQ and Dance at the Blue Song in Lapta given by the Foreign Residents Association. It’ll be fun – all different nationalities….
Apart from that, jobs continue. Bob has been doing some tidying up in a couple of the bathrooms. We are hoping to entirely renovate the downstairs cloakroom in the autumn but we’ve freshened up the tiling a bit ahead of that. The renovation was planned for 2020 but of course, covid got in the way of that. We hope we’ve repaired and replaced all the garden watering lines now. It’s a long and tedious job that we tackle annually. The plastic pipes just don’t last that long exposed to the heat. Bob has got very good at it, but all the drilling of holes and poking the nozzles through makes his poor old thumbs ache!!!!
He went to canasta club last Thursday. It’s a weekly afternoon get together at the Blue Song bar and restaurant organised in conjunction with the Foreign Residents. Just friendly play. He really enjoys it. Anyone can go, so if you’re here and fancy a game, or learning to play, go along about midday – you’ll be very much welcomed.
We’ve been bbq’ing quite a bit. Evenings are warming up, although having said that, the last few days have seen some heavy showers and some wind. It hasn’t quite settled into summer yet. Late this year.