DIARY STUART REID
There is no stopping my American wife now that she has become a British citizen. I took her tea at 7.15 on Sunday morning and found that she'd switched on the television and was watching Argentina play Nigeria, to psych herself up for the big England game later on. By Monday she was so fired by patriotism that she taped the Union Jack she'd bought at Homebase to the handlebars of her bicycle and went to a street party near the Balham Leisure Centre, in south London. Twenty-five years ago, so far as I can remember, the street parties were grim: rain, flares, cans of Strongbow and Special Brew, workers' tea, bossy women, broken jaws, adulterous fumblings. I had expected Monday's pop concert at the Palace to be equally grim, or at the very least grotesquely embarrassing, and sat down to watch it with a sneer in my heart. In fact, Elton John and Ben Elton aside, it was quite astonishingly good. There were heroic performances from Brian May, Paul McCartney, Brian Wilson (painfully focused and completely out of it), the Prince of Wales, even dear old Cliff Richard. And did anyone else notice the remarkable resemblance between Ozzy Osbourne and the Queen?
Yet there is room for wet-blanketry. In spite of the church services and easy-listening recitals, and the joyful crowds who sang 'Land of Hope and Glory' in the Mall on Tuesday, little about this Jubilee has had anything to do with traditional values. The gig at the Palace in particular was a celebration of the material good fortune that has played such a big part in undermining this country and its institutions in the past 50 years. It was a tribute not to the monarchy but to the people. It was a media event. At times on Monday night Her Majesty looked puzzled and anxious. Little wonder. The people are fickle. If they had to choose between the Queen and Queen, many of them would choose Queen. All they need is love.
Multiculturalism is, of course, one of the official sponsors of the Jubilee. I went to an interfaith service in Battersea Park on Sunday. It was a sad, ill-attended affair, hilariously presided over by that great and good egg the Rt Revd Hugh Montefiore. (`Now we are going to release 2002 doves. . . . ' Hurried, off-mike conversation. 'Oh, no we are not. Someone has already done that. They've gawn orf.') There were prayers and affirmations of loyalty from Muslims, Sikhs ('Too daataa jouaa sabhanaa kaa, Basaho maray man maahee,' and so on), Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Baha'ists (in what I took to be the lilting tones of Connemara), even Christians. It
was well meant, but it was left to a nineyear-old West Indian boy with a piercing voice to capture the spirit of the occasion. In a cod rendition of Martin Luther King, he said he had a dream of a day when children of Wandsworth would not know the meaning of the term 'institutional racism'. He got a 'very special' thank you from the bishop.
At the convent in Streatham where my mother is banged up, someone has planted a large St George's flag in the geranium pot next to the the visitors' entrance. English people sometimes take a dim view of the Irish — bog-trotters, Fenian rabble, you name it — but the kind and hard-working Irish nuns who look after my mother might win Norman Tebbit's approval. They seem to be rooting for England and that nice David Beckham. Like the rest of us, they are going to be disappointed: unlike the rest of us, they'll offer it up. The weather was so good over the weekend that for the life of me I couldn't think of an excuse not to take mother out. As a 'special Jubilee treat', therefore, I pushed her across Tooting Common in her wheelchair. 'I had no idea Tooting Common was so big,' she said. 'I don't think I have ever seen so much grass in London.' For almost 60 years she lived between Hampstead Heath and Regent's Park, and could barely move for grass. 'Of course you have,' I said irritably. 'Oh, really?' she said. She asks a lot of questions. 'Why is this street called Dr Johnson's Way?' I told her that it was because Dr Johnson used to stay with Mrs Thrale in Streatham. She looked doubtful. 'I don't remember Dr Johnson's ever having mentioned Streatham.' Mother does not believe anything good or interesting can ever have happened in south London. Then: 'Why are there prostitutes on Bedford Hill?' I told her that I hadn't the foggiest. 'Really?' she said. 'You surprise me.' We stopped for a cigarette on the southern edge of the common, not far from the hill of iniquity. A spaced-out black prostitute came tottering towards us on high heels. She was wearing shiny leather trousers that were torn in the seat. The buckle of her belt was undone. She crouched in the bushes. It was not a pretty sight. Perhaps she was taking a fix. Or perhaps she was attending to the call of nature. Whatever the case, I do not suppose that it was a profitable Jubilee weekend for her. Poor woman.
South London isn't the place it was, mind. One of the things I miss, in Balham at least, is militant Islam. Muslim fundamentalists have assumed a low profile over the past nine months, but before last September they used to provide a public service by defacing lewd advertising hoardings at bus stops. Perhaps in a few months these principled Islamicists will be back with their spray paint. At any rate, the war for civilisation seems to be on the wane now that George W. Bush has indicated that he is not going to invade Iraq, and life may be about to return to normal.
When I heard my old friend Dame Edna Everage refer to the Queen on Monday night as the 'Jubilee girl'. I recalled the happy outcome of an earlier example of her/his lese-majesty. I was at a show given by Barry Humphries in Sydney in the late 1960s, It began with the National Anthem, played off-key and out-of-tune. The trendy audience laughed obediently. One of my friends, who was a passionate royalist and very, very drunk, rose to his feet and, without a trace of irony, yelled, 'What's the matter with you bastards? Haven't you any respect for the f—ing Queen?'
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