The Queens Birthday and Trooping the Colour

 
Subject: The Queens Birthday and Trooping the Colour.



It's funny how rounded our lives, watching events much as we did 70 years ago.
It's the Queens birthday and although I am not a royalist by any stretch of the imagination I was still fascinated by the Pomp and Circumstance of the occasion.
The guardsmen resplendent in their red tunics and bearskin, the pageantry of the various uniforms sworn by the bandmasters who head the troops as they march, and the men with their trombones and trumpets, snare drum and kettle drum, marching backwards and forwards across the Horse Guards parade ground.
With Mr Trump packed off home, even the Queen I'm sure felt relieved to feel British again. I have watched the Trouping of the Colour so many times. I was a little lad when I first watched the show on our 9" screen, in black and white which my Dad had bought  to watch the Coronation the previous year.  Previously I had been taken to London to see Whitehall and all the government buildings. That's the Foreign Office that's the Home Office and that's the Admiralty  with the short wave antenna on the roof said my Dad, proud to know his world history and the part we played in it.
As a kid I had marvelled at the stories of brave battles.  Fighting the heathens  in Omdurman, the Boers at the Battle of Ladysmith and the siege of Kimberly. The battles against the Zulu at Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift and the bravery at sea against the Germans. These were the flesh and blood of those stories, true life adventures, not the sci-fi of today full of fictional characters performing to a PC script.
As Brexit makes us feel small, the sound of the marching bands made small boys feel large. Before the cross current of the modern day slander of colonial times, before we were reprimanded for the oppression of people in far flung countries, criticised for what we thought was a civilising effect on cultures so alien to our own.
The call of the NCO resplendent in their stripes, ramrod stiff brought the troops round to form up in front of the queen. 

This little old lady taking the salute. I remember her as a young women sitting on her horse straight on a side saddle (etiquette for a woman in those days) and regal even then. The death of her father had thrust the burden of high office on her shoulders too soon but she responded to duty, a duty she had been schooled for since birth.
The troops continued to pass the Queen. The Horse Artillery's guns pulled in the same way as when they fought the Ottomans. The jingle of the Household Cavalry with their polished breast plates and spiked helmets. The Coldstream Guards the oldest regiment in  the army. Smart as a butchers dog these men were at the pinnacle of their Army careers and the opportunity to put on a show was always well within their means. The tunes were their favourites, as they were ours and as the band swung left off the parade ground  up the Mall with the Palace in the distance another birthday had come and gone but unlike Mr Trump we will hope she is here next year for another celebration.