Eyewitness

My mother forwarded me an email she received from a woman she knows in London who witnessed the Queen’s procession down the Thames.  It was really cool to have a personal eyewitness account of all the action.  She is a poet and wrote such a wonderful description of the flotilla passing the spot she was standing in with thousands of other Londoners “determined to party despite the cold wind, grey skies and pouring rain”.  It sounded brilliant.

Events such as this amaze me.  I remember being down on the Delaware River one July 4^th.  My mother had gotten tickets for the whole family to attend a party to be given on an old ship that was moored at Penn’s landing.  At the end of the night, as is the custom, we witnessed the fireworks display.  I had often seen the display on TV but it did not compare to being there in person.  I remember standing there with the other people on the boat and looking around at the hundreds of other people standing on the shore.  All I could see were people looking up and hear the music blaring through the speakers keeping time with the pyrotechnics as they burst in the air.  It was not a milestone year, such as the bicentennial or the millennium, but all the same the celebratory feeling was there as we celebrated yet another year of America’s birthday.

The Diamond Jubilee that is going on now in England is a special time for that country.  From what I have read, Queen Elizabeth II is a much loved monarch and according to a BBC article I read “conveys a sense of history the like of which we have not seen in Britain since the reign of her great-great-grandmother Victoria”.  Past jubilees have been slow but this one is apparently has had much interest and warmth toward the Queen.  It is fascinating to see and read about England’s relationship to their monarch and I hope that my mother’s friend sends more.