The Coronation - 5: The Excitement is Overwhelming

 Just three short days to go until my old mate Chaz can stick a fancy piece of jewellery on his bonce and nobody will laugh. Surely, one would think, the streets will be awash with flags and patriotic symbols, there will be bunting festooned between the houses, there will be memorabilia galore to buy and display, there will be a flowering of the magnificent artistic talents for which this nation is rightly renowned?

As a litmus test of the extent to which the Coronation is gripping the entire country, I opted to do some hard-hitting, in-depth research here in beautiful Ruislip. I carefully selected a shop representative of the town - Sainsbury's in South Ruislip - and thither I conducted myself on this pleasant spring morning.[You do your regular shopping there anyway, don't you? Ed]. The results, I fear, were less than overwhelming. I took two photographs and these encapsulate the entirety of the impact of the forthcoming event.

Tucked adjacent to the stationery and computer bits shelf, a little display with a few Chaz'n'Cammy masks. Strung up along some of the cash tills and the self-scan checkouts a few strings of Union Jacks. And, as I have already noted, nothing else at all in the store to mark this day out as in any way different from any other early bank holiday. And that's not the royal purple on the placards behind, its just adverts for Sainsbury's Nectar card prices.

There might have been mugs adorned with the royal faces. There could have been colouring books of crowns, beefeaters and princes for the tinies and build-it-yourself models of the royal coaches for the older kids. There might have been long, pull-out maps of the royal route, coronation quiches piled up in the deli section, full length costumes of crowns, ermine, robes, stars of the garter etc for loyalists to don whilst they chanted the "Homage of the People", perhaps books in which loyal sentiments could be inscribed before being sent off to Buckingham Palace.  There might have been many sights and wonders, plus opportunities for shrewd entrepreneurs to sell loads of cheap tat provided it was described as "Right Royal" and adorned with flags.¹
 

But there was nothing other than what you see in those photos. When the grandchildren of the nation ask plaintively in years to come "What did you do to celebrate the coronation", the answer will be "I put on a comic mask with the King's face on it" and they will look puzzled and sad.

Footnote:

1. Absolutely something we at Ramblings would never do, our cheap tat only comes with one flag.