Pageantry, Smageantry

Accessions are not like normal life, thank goodness!

Every so often one is forced to consider, after being in total ignorance of, elements of British culture that is forced on us, usually through the medium of TV, but more often now via social media.

I clicked on the BBC news on my iPad the other day to see a sea of gaudy costumes on my screen. After donnng sunglasses, I looked again. The scene was from Saint James's Palace, the existence of which I had no idea. There was a meeting of something called the Accession Council. Solemn people deciding, (surely a foregone conclusion), whether or not Charles should become king.

There was only one possible answer and it therefore seemed an unnecessary expense to get these worthies out of bed on a Saturday morning, suited and booted, to sit in a fusty old Palace to make a non-decision. I don't know, because I missed the beginning, if HRH was there from the start, which would've been hard in itself. Imagine having to listen to the vote. What if someone voted in Scooby Doo? There was a plethora of previous prime ministers, perhaps there was one in particular who had a reason to go rogue.

Charles and son were gracing the 21st-century in frock coats. Why? Everyone else was in suits and those two stepped straight out of Dickens. Who advised them that was the look for the morning?

Then there was the touchy moment when the new monarch had to sign the accession document. The table he was given was clearly too small and the layout was all wrong. The inkwell, (yes inkwell, another nod to the 19 century), was closest to Charles when he sat down instead of being above the document, and there was a box of pens below the second document which meant it was really awkward to reach the documents to sign. After dipping his pen in the inkwell (really?), he tried to move the inkwell out of the way and pull the document towards him but didn't think to lift the inkwell and place it above the document. I don't suppose he's ever had to consider such a menial task. Irritated, he thrust a box of pens at an off-camera aide and completed his task. If I expected the immediate beheading of a hapless table layer I was disappointed.

The TV cameras took us outside the palace to a balcony where a large man, made larger by his red and gold livery which glistened and shimmered in the sunlight, read the Accession document, or rather proclaimed it loudly. He lamented the Queen's death and heralded the new King’s reign.

He was the Garter King of Arms and I'm sure it wasn't only me that had never heard of the role before, but then if he's only wheeled out to proclaim accessions, then we wouldn't have been aware of him. So perhaps it couldn’t have been that particular man who proclaimed at the last accession because he would be about a century and a half by now. Perhaps it’s handed down from father to son, but only if the fancy dress fits. I digress.

Presumably the Garter King of Arms has a day job that doesn't involve wearing the preposterous costume and hat. Where does that costume live when he's not wearing it? Maybe with the other weird outfits worn by the bizarrely resplendent but tuneless buglers behind him. Where do they keep those men? Is it in a large cupboard marked ‘Tuneless Buglers’? Does that gaudy fancy dress come out on other occasions that, I'm relieved to say, I have no knowledge of? Who pays for all that exhibitionism? Oh, just a minute, we the taxpayer of course. Silly me.

And then there were the men in red coats with black Bearskins, (now there’s a silly hat). They were the King’s Guard, part of the Coldstream Guards,  who were taught, not just to march and perform as one unit in times of war but also to lay down arms on the ground, remove the Bearskins revealing sweating hair sticking to their foreheads, hold on shoulders until three cheers were called for, and then self-consciously raising the hat, calling ‘hooray!’ It was like watching a confused alien species. Do you suppose that’s part of their Salisbury Plain exercises when we think they’re being trained to save the nation? ‘It’s a man’s life in the army’.

There’s more to come of course. After the funeral on Monday, (which I’m spending on a beach in France far away from a TV screen), the lurid colour schemes and silly hats will be put away until the coronation, when pomp and ceremony will know no bounds and the food banks will be closed for the day again.