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Feeling a bit better this morning after a half decent sleep. Which was lucky as we were taking the kids swimming. We were back to the outdoor pool that we’d been to the day before lockdown ended last July. Back then my daughter had grabbed me in the 2 metre section and I’d struggled to get her to safety. Today the same thing happened. My slightly bigger and heavier daughter laughing as she grabbed me round the shoulders, me struggling to get to the side of the pool before we died. The survival instinct kicked in and I found a strength I didn’t know I had.
It was sort of fun, though a little bit cold both in and outside the pool. It was hard to work out if it was better to be fully in the water or partly out of it. If you kept moving it was more or less fun. Still the one pound parking fee was waived due to the Jubilee, so it wasn’t all bad. I thought everything should be free today. Do these people love the possibly already dead monarch or not?
We drove to another town for lunch. There was much debate about what vehicles were allowed in Yellow Car. My daughter seemed to think they did if she saw them first. Eventually she said that if it had wheels and was yellow (or pink) it would count. But then I saw an ambulance and she said that that didn’t count. Because she said it was green. Even though it was yellow.
Later I got ahead in the game and Phoebe said she didn’t want to play any more. I told her that you can never stop playing Yellow Car. Once you’re in, you’re in. She was crying a bit and Catie said she didn’t have to play if she didn’t want to. How are we going to raise competitive kids if we let them off this easily?
We haven’t yet got very involved in the Jubilee, though there’s more stuff going on in the village at the weekend. I was 10 in 1977 when the Silver Jubilee was a huge deal (just 45 short years ago) and even though this celebration is four days long, the Platinum doesn’t seem to be quite as universally celebrated as the Silver. I think I was a republican even back in 77 (though I happily accepted my Silver Jubilee Crown - I have about three of them somehow), but I definitely am now. In a society that doesn’t seem to spend money on anyone else it seems weird that most people don’t seem to mind huge amounts of money being spent on one of the richest families in the world. Stacey Solomon seems to have seen through the looking glass and has wondered why this still goes on. And if Stacey doesn’t have any mote in her eyes then surely the rest of us have to follow.
I am not a big fan of the Royals, but I guess seeing Boris Johnson being aggressively booed by the kind of people who so love our country and our Royal Family that they were prepared (presumably) to camp overnight for plum positions at the front of proceedings, probably made the whole thing worthwhile and is the kind of thing that might actually (possibly) see him face a vote of no confidence. Though I don’t know why anyone but the Tories is keen to get rid of him. He’s turned from electoral gold to electoral cyanide and it’d be a shame if the Tories got in someone else and held on to power.
RHLSTP Book Club is with my old mucky mucker Emma Kennedy talking about her book “Letters From Brenda”. It’s a good chat and an ace book.
Listen here
