The Coronation

I never quite manage to keep to the title if I write it first. I find the best method is to meander to where my writing takes me and think of a title afterwards, when I am done with the day's offering. For example, the subject of food leads quite naturally on to the theme of parties and Sunday School parties, and a street party for the coronation.
It was 1953 of course, and I watched from the upstairs window how long trestle-tables were put up in the middle of the road. Everybody had to bring their own chairs, so it didn't matter about those. The party can't have taken place the actual day of the coronation because we were away at my Aunt's at Hatch End to watch it on the TV - the one with the tiny twelve-inch screen, that we would acquire a few years later.
I remember, on the morning of the party, my mother looking pessimistically at the leaden June sky and predicting that it would pour with rain, and the half-a crown that she had paid for me to go would be wasted. But it didn't rain, not more than a few drops anyway, but it was chilly, and I had to cover up my best summer dress with a thick bobbly cardigan.
People had gone mad with red, white and blue. In the house opposite us they painted the palings of their fence in pillar-box red, royal blue and snowy white. The bunting they put up for the party, the decorations in all the shop windows and even my hair-ribbons were red,white and blue. My not desperately patriotic mother declared when the coronation was all over, that she never wanted to see those colours again as long as she lived. But she did take me into Central lLondon a couple of times, along the Mall and to Buckingham Palace, to join in all the excitement of getting ready for the important occasion. I think it was even bigger than Charles'and Diana's wedding. Probably it was a celebration that the war and all its privations was well and truly over. The country needed a reason to celebrate, be happy and go a bit mad. And the ascension to the throne of the pretty, young queen with her then, handsome husband and two beautiful children, was the excuse that everybody had been waiting for. It was a burst of pure sunhine after a long,dark night.
Not that there was very much sunshine to be seen on the actual day of the coronation. But the wonderful, mile-long procession went ahead anyway, with all its pomp and ceremony in spite of the fine drizzle which hardly let up the whole day. Sovereigns and statesmen from all the parts of the Comenwealth were there. I remember especially the Queen of Tonga who was over six foot tall and enormously fat, who rode in her own coach. And what a splendid display all the soldiers made, not onlyour own soldiers, but the colourful mounties from Canada, the Ghurkas and the Australien troops, with their wide-brimmed hats pinned up on one side. The palace guards wore their bearskins, but rather disappointingly, their red uniforms were covered by their long, grey coats, because of the rain.
The thousands of people waiting along the coronation route, however, hardly seemed to notice the rain , so loudly did they cheer. Probably the rain was evaporated in the warmth of their exuberance and enthusiasm, and the few drops that reached them merely served to send them into even greater frenzies of cheering. That is how it seemed to us, safely watching it all on television in a dry, warm living room at Hatch End. Perhaps the reality was, that many people got colds and suffered from mild exposure, especially those who had been there all night.
I can see it now, in vivid technicolour in my mind's eye, though at the time, I was only able see it all in black and white. I even remember the gold of the beautiful royal coach, with the Queen waving and smiling, and the crowds going mad.
Princess Anne a tiny little girl then, with a shock of blond, curly hair, was considered too young to go. Prince Charles, a serious, chubby little boy with a sheet of thick hair combed straight over his forehead, was allowed. He was very, very good. The royal children were not much younger than I was, so I could identify with them.
At school, on Monday mornings I queued up to buy National Savings Stamps. I mostly had to be content with a sixpenny stamp, with Princess Anne's curly head on it, but sometimes, when my mother had been feeling more generous than usual, I would be able to buy a larger stamp for half a crown (five times more expensive than the sixpenny one) with Prince Charles on it. Soon, my savings book was full of stamps, and my savings could be transferred to a Post Office account. I have forgotten what happened to it after that. The Post Office was a sort of black hole, where once you had handed your money in, over the counter to the clerk behind the metal grill, you never saw it again.
My Grandmother used to buy a magazine every week, either 'Woman' or 'Women's Own'. One of them, round about that time, had a centre-fold of Prince Charles and Princess Anne sitting in a beautiful garden, and surrounded by lush, dark foliage. It had the atmosphere of a Watteau painting, mysterious and exciting. I remember setting myself the challenge that if I looked at that picture long enough and concentrated hard, I would suddenly find myself transported into that magic garden with them. Needless to say, it didn't work, and somehow, after the failure of my little experiment, the mundane hit me especially hard. I didn't want to be in a place where nylon underwear and stockings, dripped from a line strung up in the kitchen. and where my grandmother wore an old working apron instead of a tiara.
I can see myself now, carrying the old kitchen chair down into the street. It was not a particularly safe operation for a childof my age, considering how many stairs and outside steps I had to negotiate, but I was adament. I wouldn't let anyone help, so my mother just hovered, just in case. Nothing happened. I got to the bottom without mishap, and took my place at the trestle table, right in front of an enormous green jelly. Yes it was the normal party fare for those days. The hard-pressed adults in charge did their best to get us to behave and eat the sandwiches first before demolishing the cakes and jellies, but I don't think they entirely succeeded. Jugs of orange juice were passed rapidly up and down the table, and became empty so quickly, that it was almost a full-time job for someone to keep replenishing them. Mugs got spilt. Colourful table decorations got spoilt. Balloons escaped from their tetherings or burst, sending the little ones into floods of tears with the shock. Naughty boys discovered ten different things to do with left-over jelly and blancmange, and the whole thing ended in our part of the road, with our table collapsing. By this time we were all overexcited and our parents began to appear to remove us from the fray.
There was the advantage of course, that I didn't have far to go home. By this time, my red, white and blue hair ribbons were drooping, throughhaving been dipped in the orange juice and I was tired. There had been too much excitement that afternoon.
I suppose I had better call this instalment 'The Coronation'