September 19, 2022
Day 13: Maldon
We decided to stick at Maldon today, since the whole country was shut down to watch the Queen's funeral on TV. By shut down, we mean all shops, 99% of restaurants, everything. We too were not immune to the Queen's funeral obsession, and it seemed like a great idea to sit on the bed and watch the while pageant unfold, for about eight hours!
We thought we had prepared for the shutdown, by buying chef's salads and yogurt and stashing it in our food bag. Because hotels have refused to store our stuff in their fridges, we put the bag outside in the garden, with a note asking that it be not disturbed, but unfortunately also with our room number. In the morning we found some helpful staffer had brought the bag in and dropped it in the hall by our door, where of course it could warm up and be inedible.
The hotel did come up with some breakfast, so it was not a fast day after all.
We certainly have the feeling of being part of a moment in history, being here with the British population, and observing with them the incredible colour and ceremony of the funeral. It helped a lot that we were so recently at Buckingham Palace and Westminster, so we could look at the TV images and exclaim "Hey, we were there!"
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Dodie despaired a bit with me, for my relative inability to recognize royal family members or to know who is related to whom. But here clearly are Charles and Camilla, and Princess Anne, who is Charles's sister. William appeared in a military uniform, but not Harry. Harry had "resigned" from the Royal Family, and Buckingham Palace banned him from wearing the uniform, despite 10 years of military service. We think this rather backfired because his red head, not in a uniform hat, seemed to stick out in every TV shot, while Charles and William were rather invisible.
In keeping with our cycle blog tradition of recording historic architecture, here is a bit of Westminster Abbey, and followed by Buckingham Palace.
We have an old friend who is an Anglican priest. We met him when he was doing his Doctor of Divinity at McGill University, around 1970, and have stayed in touch since. So for you, John Kater, here is a shot of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Before the whole "thing" was actually done, we lost patience and went out for a walk. We had found especially the long cortege march to be quite depressing.
Out on the high street, we confirmed that the town was locked up tight. It was not even obvious how to get out of The White Horse. But we somehow did it, and can bring this image of the picturesque high street:
And here is the white horse namesake of our hotel
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