Back into London today, not to go and stand by the river in the rain in the hope of seeing an old woman being forced to endure a flotilla in her honour, but to perform an afternoon gig in a pub for Michael Legge, who hadn't even bothered to turn up himself.
You know, there was a chance that I could have been the modern day Samuel Pepys, describing the big events of the early 21st Century for the historical record, but I always seem to be at the wrong place when anything important happens. But when the Queen celebrated 60 years on the throne with the biggest parade of boats in 350 years, I was in a cellar near Oxford Street talking to 15 people about cocks. Which I don't think will be in the history books. Not if the people in charge of the Fringe programme also end up compiling history.
I didn't see any of the crowds or even watch the TV coverage, but maybe that might give me a unique historical perspective, which will be of use to those 23rd Century people reading this now in the British Library archives. I saw all the periphery but none of the event and also, having been out of London for most of the build up, I felt like someone from a foreign land who had just been cast adrift on a strange shore or like a Gary Sparrow transported back in time to somewhere familiar, but different. There were Union flags all the way up Oxford Street and also at the Westfield shopping centre and this outburst of patriotic fervour felt wrong, even a little sinister. Especially as outside of institutions and shops the British public (or Londoners anyway) had not taken the jubilee to their hearts. Perhaps a house in each street had some bunting up or a flag in the window and the occasional car had tiny Union flags flying from its windows, but the rarity of such celebration made them stand out even more. It seemed odd that these occasional people cared. And slightly chilling that all shops seemed to have tried to cash in, almost like what that's what was expected of them and if they didn't show solidarity they'd be in trouble. If it hadn't been for the Britishness of the bunting then I thought it was a bit like I had stepped into an alternate universe where Hitler had won the war. But maybe Hitler would have been clever enough to allow us to keep our own symbols, even if he would have been our monarch.
A lot of shops at the Westfield were selling flags and bunting, even ones that usually just sold pet food or cut keys. They were jumping on the bandwagon. The real test of their patriotism would be if they were still selling this stuff when it wasn't the Jubilee.
I am sure had I been down at the river and seen millions of wet people with hypothermia cheering the Queen it might have seemed less sinister, but out on the edges there was something weird and controlling about it. And it didn't feel like London to me.
I guess, inevitably, for a weekend the city had taken a step back in time and that's fair enough. But the street parties and the bunting seem to be ghosts of something we once were, but aren't any more. I don't think the changes are a bad thing, I actually love the way that my home city is cosmopolitan and represents the world.
Flotillas and flags and royalty in the pissing rain.... it seems to by symbolic. If the Queen rules by divine right, you'd think that God could have seen to it to make the sun shine today. After He's made it shine so brightly for the last couple of weeks it seems almost sarcastic to make it rain now.
We had dinner at a Thai restaurant where everyone is put around communal tables. Our table, over the course of the hour, was shared by us, three Muslim women, a black father and daughter, some European tourists and an Asian couple. All eating Thai food. That says more about London in the 21st Century than anything that was going on elsewhere today.
But I was sad not to be on the river. I've always fancied a tug by the Queen.
