There's a house, a big house, Victoria way, with balconies and gates. I've only been in its vicinity three or four times. One of those times was the 21st of April 1986, the 60th birthday of the resident.
There was a phonecall to my home just before the summer term started. I'd been chosen. A couple of boys from each year had been chosen to attend the Queen's 60th birthday celebration. So, you see, I was a pretty big deal back then.
Things I remember of the day: Radio 1 came to the school on the morning to interview us before we set off. They asked us what we'd say to the queen if we met her. I think I said "Happy Birthday Mum ... (people laughed) ... Ma'am" and I think that was actually on radio, so I think the first and only time I've been on BBC Radio 1 was letting slip that the queen was my mother.
Next thing: we had our own routemaster to travel from Ealing to central London. It felt like a treat, just a not particularly enjoyable treat.
I've looked the day up on the internet, and have found out, in case people look at the 80s as a particularly different time from now, that there was a heavy security around the event because of a terrorist threat. From Libya, specifically, on that occasion.
That rings true. I remember it was a miserable, pissing day and we spent most of it in a holding pattern on Horseguards Parade. Not having cake with the queen.
But, to be fair, when all were called forward for the extravaganza of reverential love, we were quite near the front.
There were songs. I always remember the songs, the creepy songs. There was a specially written one and the lyrics went something like "Happy birthday ma'am, we bring you / this singing wish in spring. Shower and shine with all our love, good in everything" and then everyone ritually puked.
And also we had to sing 'Congratulations" and there were printed lyric sheets but I was told off by an older boy because I wasn't singing, and the reason I wasn't singing was that the lyrics said "I want the world to know that I'm in love with you" and I wasn't in love with her, and I was emotionally mature enough to realise that you should never tell a reigning monarch that you love them and not mean it.
I didn't get to meet the queen. But the headmaster of our catholic school run by monks, Father D___, did have a good, cheery chat with the soon-to-be-happily-married Duke of York. That guy's in prison now, he was a darkness, Father D___. He wasn't like other monks (not that several of them were any better). He was slick, he was sharp. My mother (actual mother) called him a schmoozer. There he was, schmoozing, I was so proud. Still got the clipping from the Ealing Gazette. Still remember the songs, the creepy songs "I belong to the family of God, I belong to the family of friends, I belong to everyone, it's great to know, to know, that I belong".
I don't think that day made me a republican. Most of my life I've been a merely theoretical republican anyway, aware of all the stable North European constitutional monarchies and knowing there could be worse, however ridiculous the whole thing is once you even think about it for two seconds, however much the whole existence of the thing blows your mind when you think about it for more than two seconds.
I understand the quasi-familial affection folk hold for the queen, anyway. I really do understand that.
I'm probably more of an actual republican now, I suppose, than theoretical, more ready to stick my neck out and be on the right side of the reordering should it come. Let the schmoozers be the losers.
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