Waking up this morning to find the radio blurting out depressing dirge, for the second successive day, reminds me that we do not live in a normal country, if such a thing exists at all. Their is something deeply weird about suspending all normal programmes -- and by extension, ordinary life -- to mark the death of a man of whom few Britons would have found good words to say in his lifetime. The BBC, and other media, seem desperate to force on us -- via the act of cancelling not only all the regular radio shows but also the final of Masterchef -- the notion that Royalty is somehow special, rather than a weird historic relic. A hangover which we seem unable to get over.
I mean, if you don't find this weird, consider this. Radio 6 is playing Aphex Twin in the daytime, rather than, say, Royal Blood, because a 99 year-old non-person (in a quasi-literal sense, his existence was to be a non-person, he remarked as much himself) has died. I've actually turned to streaming Body Count over Spotify, not because of the name, but simply because I wanted to listen to something loud with lots of swearing in it. I'm not sure what HRH would have thought about Body Count. I suspect disapproval. Or perhaps something rather stronger than disapproval.
Now is, of course, not the time to question the monarchy. He's barely cold and not yet in his grave. But if not now, when we shut down the country to mark the passing of a person whose job was to produce heirs (success) and then be invisible (failure), then when.
It's just, and I apologise for repeating myself, so deeply, deeply weird. In a few year's time, assuming she doesn't turn out to be immortal, after all, we'll be ruled by Prince Charles. No sane country would chose to be ruled by Prince Charles, and of course, neither will we. He'll be King by default. How is it possible to not even question that inevitability?
An argument, a really, really weak argument against Republicanism is the phrase "President Thatcher" or "President Blair", but it seems to me the best possible argument for Republicanism right now is "President Johnson". If we had a Presidency (of the sort Germany has, rather than the ridiculous sort that America has) presumably Boris Johnson would have aspired to that -- Head of State is what he really wants to be -- rather than the rather mundane, and frankly requires-hard-work-and-diligence role of Prime Minister. Johnson in a role that satisfied his monstrous ego (and I speak as someone with a fairly well developed ego, so I can only sit back and admire as he strides around the country and treats everything and everyone as simply a means to temporarily satisfy his own insatiable desires) without actually requiring him to do anything, particularly to do anything to us, would be the perfect solution. Sadly, we get the worst of both worlds. PM Johnson and His Majesty King Charles III. The way things are going, probably both at the same time.
Incidentally, one has to be consistent in one's views, I feel. So this isn't about Charles himself, though I do appreciate that QEII has done a pretty good job, or had, right up until the point she allowed Johnson and Rees-Mogg to start trampling all over the constitution, at which point obviously she turned out to be less use than a chocolate fireguard, of course. I mean, you can't expect her to do things. The point is not to do things. But I digress. It isn't about personalities. It's weird enough shutting down Radio 6 for an undefined length of side when the Consort dies (and 'Consort' is deeply weird in itself), it's far weirder having strong views about the Royals as people. The whole Harry/Megan thing says much more about the people it brings to a foaming rage on either side, than it does about er. I mean, these are non-entities. Who, seriously, gives a fuck?
But yeah, hopefully she is immortal. Because when she dies and the people of this country wake up and find themselves governed, if only in a loose sense, by Chas, I think they are going to lose their moorings. At that point the weirdness of the whole thing will, I fear, become overwhelming and, I dunno what, but something will happen to the national psyche.
It's long past time to grow up.
