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.
Even though our new government has put in measures to subsidise energy costs, they are still significantly higher than they were a year ago. The hot summer weather is fast disappearing into Autumn coolness.
As the coffin was being lowered into the ground, my tears also reflected my qualms at what the next few weeks and months have in store for us.
We have bathed in a surreal experience. Thursday 8th September feels a long time ago. First there was confusion following a rare statement about the condition of Her Majesty’s health. Would she rally from this or would she, as I suspected, be dead by morning?
The death had already happened and at six-thirty that evening we were informed of this. Our Queen, who had always been there, whether you were seven years old or seventy, had passed. Although we knew her health and mobility had declined, the recent smiling pictures of her bidding farewell to an outgoing…
