Time travel ...

I am sitting on the floor of a largish sitting room in Hyndland, Glasgow. It is identical in size and shape to our own front room, which is directly above it, but unlike ours it has a large concert harp and three lesser harps, one at least of which is a clarsach, for the woman of the couple who live here is the well-known harpist Sanchia Pielou. At the time I don’t really know this, for I think of her as Mrs Macey. I am seven years old and I am here, along with my four-year old sister and another girl, Norah Wiseman, who is a bit older and who lives on the ground floor, sitting in front of all the other residents in our close. We are all focussed on a very small brown-boxed television with a tiny screen, for this is the day of the Coronation. 

In fact, despite the growing number of union flags and the free gifts of Coronation mugs, sweetie tins and other memorabilia over the past few weeks, I have been preoccupied with getting my tonsils and adenoids out. This happened about a week before the big day, on our kitchen table. And were you to ask why on earth I was having this potentially hazardous operation in the kitchen of a top flat in Hyndland, on the table off which we had our meals, next to the coal bunker, near the range, I would be at a loss. I know that tonsillectomies were all the rage at the time as the cure for childhood sore throats, though I have only recently found out that there was a growing suspicion of a link with TB. I can actually half-remember the appointment with the GP at which the prospect of a home operation was discussed, though I think mine must have been one of the last such carried out in Glasgow.

Despite the horror I now feel at the prospect of all that, it must have been a success, for here I am, a week later, on my first outing since the operation. I can remember some aspects of the day - the Queen’s day, not my operation day - quite clearly. I recall wondering how all the adults in the room - there must have been at least 15 - knew the words of another verse of the National Anthem. ( I reckon it must’ve been printed in the Radio Times). I remember the grim antiquity that was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Queen looking impossibly solemn under that crown. It all looked very grey - it wasn’t till later that our school was all taken to the cinema to see the colour film, along with the film of the ascent of Everest. 

When it was over at last (yes, I reckon I was bored), there was a buffet full of strange-tasting canapés  (no, I didn’t know that’s what they were called). Most of them seemed to involve a brown paste on pastry. And then my father decided that I looked tired and needed another penicillin tablet and a sleep and took me off, back upstairs, to my bed in our house. He told me afterwards that I had rescued him from terminal boredom and he was happy to have escaped with good grace.

And all that was 70 years ago, less four weeks.

Other people will write interminably about today’s ceremony, but I’ll leave that for another time, maybe. I watched it all. The music was great, though some unsuited to its performance. I love Anglican ritual but didn’t like the insistence on England in the wording of one of the more critical parts of the service. And the soldiers were wonderful.

Can you imagine playing a trombone on a moving horse?

Blipping my favourite view of today's Coronation service, with the choir about to launch into one of the new compositions for the day.