vivat camilla
It appears I arrived in London at precisely the wrong time. If I stay in my own sleepy neighbourhood perhaps I can escape it, but if I venture any further infield, I’m inundated with the apparently heart-stopping news that it’s been ten years since Diana Spencer’s death.
This is the one thing, for me, that turns England into (as Miss King put it) “this sceptr’d loony bin, this U.K. of Utter Kitsch”. Editorial pages are rife with complaints that London isn’t what it used to be, that English people are fat and stupid, that Red Ken (”London Was Made for Cycling”) is ruining everything, that telephone boxes are all that’s left, that the bowler hat is dead, replaced by iPod oblivion. Personally, I don’t see it. Perhaps it needs viewing through fresh eyes, which I certainly have, but London is still an old city, still looks the part. It’s still got game.
The one thing I don’t like about being here is the tendency towards bad American imitation, and that’s where Diana really hacks me off. Who needs a “people’s princess”, anyway? And is that really what she was? (A streeter on “Richard & Judy” said that Diana’s allure was and is all about physical attractiveness: “If she looked like the back end of a bus I don’t think anyone would be especially bothered.”) I can smell at least four more covers on People magazine coming from this, and it makes me especially glad not to be in North America, but I can only imagine what’s in store for me here.
A page from the BBC News website is full of the sort of phraseology that sends me grappling for my benzos: “The Windsors were greeted warmly by the Spencers” at the unveiling of the new memorial in Hyde Park in July 2004. I’m sure “the Windsors” were really relieved. Diana’s mother complained that the new fountain lacks sufficient grandeur. I should say so: it’s described as a “700-tonne memorial”.
700 seems to be a small number no matter which way you slice Diana: 700 guests for her ten-years-dead memorial service is considered “small” and “intimate”, and there is fury in the streets that “Mrs Parker-Bowles” is attending. There is no way for this woman to win. It reminds me of public treatment of Anne Boleyn, called “The Concubine”, “The Great Goggle-Eyed Whore”, and - most charitably - the Marquess of Pembroke, when she ought rightfully to have been referred to as the Queen. When Katherine of Aragon died, the public were horrified that Anne wore yellow, when in the event yellow was the Spanish colour of mourning. The only occasion on which Anne got any good press was three days before her execution, when Henry VIII’s ostentatious visits to Jane Seymour began an outcry against his bad taste.
It seems that the only thing Camilla can do to get people to like her is be supplanted by another woman.
According to the Daily Express 88% of Britons are outraged at the possibility of Camilla being crowned Queen. I can’t wait to become a Briton myself so that someone fucking well consults me. There wasn’t anything singular about Diana except her hysteria. Camilla has endured a set of circumstances largely beyond her control with a dignity that Diana wouldn’t have recognized if it jumped onto her yacht.
Queen Elizabeth has seven years left to go if she wants to break Queen Victoria’s record. Charles will break Prince Bertie’s record in the wings as Prince of Wales quite a bit sooner than that. But when the time comes, God save Queen Camilla. And poo to a twenty-years-dead memorial, with knobs on.
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