Mourning Is Over And A New Era Begins
After ten days of feeling an occasional lump in my throat, it was during the second hymn of the service at Windsor that my tears started to flow.
This really was a final goodbye. The Queen was gone. Seeing the orb, sceptre and the crown removed from Her Majesty’s coffin brought home that this was the end of the Elizabethan era and a new era was about to begin.
Tomorrow the mourning would be over and we would be back to the real world. Our country has many problems. At first, I had joked that all the coverage of the Queen’s passing had pushed all the regular grimness out of the news bulletins. For a few days we could forget the soaring cost of energy, the war in Ukraine and a new Prime Minister that the country at large had not chosen.
There is so much uncertainty. The ties that bind the four countries of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland into a United Kingdom are under strain. The fallout from Brexit has been magnified by the pandemic. The pound is weak and at its lowest level against the dollar for decades. The Bank of England will probably raise interest rates again to support the pound, but this is going to put further pressure on household budgets as mortgage rates will also rise.
