So the country is now recovering after the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of last weekend.
I spend the first half of the weekend visiting family in London; we [Mum, Dad, my sister Corrie and I] all drove down to [my Aunt] Shirley’s on Saturday, and in the evening we all walked through Greenwich Park and had dinner with the Harwoods [Dad’s other sister and her family].
Whilst we were there we used Skype to speak to Granddad’s cousin who lives not far from München (capital of the state of Bayern) in Germany. Some people spoke German, which I could understand perfectly: I was quite proud of the fact that I understood ‘Ostsee’ as the Baltic when everyone else interpreted it as Austria… I knew that travelling on the Nord Ostsee Bahn in Itzehoe last year would be useful at some point.
HOWEVER… when it comes to speaking German , I think in Greek too much. Not just because my Greek is better than my German, but also because the music on my iPod is all Greek (and I was listening to it in the car on the way up) and I listen to a lot of Greek radio. This doesn’t help with remembering German grammar, particularly verb endings. ‘Essω’ isn’t a verb. ‘Essen’ is.
On Sunday we called in at my Grandparents house in Welling before driving back through all the heavy rain, returning to Cirencester just in time to watch the Diamond Jubilee Pageant on TV. It was good to watch but the commentary was dire. I’ve heard that the radio commentary was much better, and annoyingly, apparently so was Sky’s. (We can’t get Sky here, even on Freeview).
The Diamond Jubilee Concert on Monday was good though – lots of great music and I enjoyed the contribution of the comedians. Its just a shame that Cheryl no-longer-Cole had completely ruined my favorite Lady Antebellum song (Need You Now) whilst Will.I.Am couldn’t even sing his own song in tune!
On Tuesday – the extra bank holiday given to us by Her Majesty’s Government – I watched the jubilee service on TV – with Huw Edwards fronting the coverage I felt it was much better than the disastrous Pageant coverage on Sunday. The music was certainly very ‘grand’!
I have always been a supporter of the Royal Family because of the way that they sum up and represent Britain much more strongly than any sort of elected president would do. I am a particular supporter of both Prince Philip and Prince Charles.
The Telegraph the other day had some very good articles re. the Diamond Jubilee as well as some very amusing letters the other day: ‘Sir – I assume that all republicans will be back at work on Tuesday‘!
Later this week I am going to be writing another blog post about the Royal Family, putting forward my reasons/arguments for my support of the British Monarchy.
I finish this blog post with some real British, very patriotic music: the BBC Radio 4 UK Theme Tune!
FH.
