No football today, just a collective collapse into social insanity.
The Royal Beekeeper went this morning to tell his bees that the queen (as opposed to their queen) was dead and that they must now “buzz for King Charles.” Someone is buzzing something anyway.
He described it as one of the “saddest days of his life.”
I would feel the same if that was a part of my job description and a duty I was actually expected to fulfil.
One picture from outside Ibrox showed a marmalade sandwich wrapped in cellophane with a note to “Lizzie” on it.
What a pointless, stupid, exercise. Do you know how hard it is to get cellophane off a sandwich? Even a homeless person probably won’t be able to eat that now. Especially after it’s been lying there for a couple of days.
One woman on BBC News 24 held up a vase which she had brought with her to the Palace gates to pay her respect. Why a vase? Her nan’s ashes were in it and her nan had always loved the queen and would have wanted to be there.
And I wonder to myself; these are supposed to be normal people.
But this is definitely not normal behaviour.
It’s bizarre. It’s like Hidden Hills opened a whole new campus and filled it overnight.
Large parts of the country have been gripped in a sort of collective madness.
Keir Starmer yesterday talked about how she “ruled over us” but simultaneously “lived amongst us.”
Even if the first part doesn’t offend you the second part should.
All this time I thought she was up in a castle somewhere when she’s been in sheltered housing in East Kilbride, getting supplies from the local food-bank and trying not to run her power card down.
It’s hard to stomach this sometimes.
We’re a modern society, and one where vast swathes of the country are living in poverty or about to be plunged into it, and everything has come to a halt because the hereditary monarch has passed on.
And that’s the appropriate term. Amongst the stuff that she “passed on” was an estate worth over £1 billion.
This is everything that’s wrong with the country summarised in the life and death of a single individual.
It comes across most, perhaps, in the mawkish sentimentality of Daily Mail and Express readers, the very people who don’t believe that the social safety net should even exist for her “subjects” and who cannot imagine what life will be like without some distant figure reigning over them.
The very “values” she was supposed to embody, in the meantime, are the very ones that their papers of choice piss all over every single day of the week.
Over at Ibrox, some of their fans are truly struggling with the complexity and depth of it.
Read their forums and you’ll see how many of them are trying hard to adapt to the new songs they have to learn and the new terminology that replaces the old.
God save the Queen is now God save the King.
The Queens Eleven is now The Kings Eleven.
This is what passes for intellectual heavy lifting over there.
The changing of a word.
It is an effort most of them will be struggling with for quite a while.
The general feeling that they and she had some kind of “special relationship” is only one manifestation of the delusions all involved over there are losing themselves in.
“We owed her so much” one bleated on Twitter, to which some wag answered “£120 million or thereabouts.”
Which made me laugh even if the final figure is disputed.
Not content with today’s fixtures being called off, they want Tuesday’s game cancelled as well with some of them even suggesting the team should “forfeit” the game on general principle. The 3-0 defeat they’d be inflicted with is probably less than the doing they’ll take, so I can see why a surprising number of them appear willing to take it on the chin.
In the meantime, from Celtic, two statements.
One acknowledging her death and the other acknowledging that we were “informed” that today’s game was off.
Nothing more.
At Celtic, all are too busy getting on with the day jobs for all this shirt-rending.
We are preparing for the game in midweek.
That’s all we’re doing.
We’re ignoring all the white noise and the mass hysteria elsewhere.
Whilst on the forums across town some are demanding that their players be spared having to “play through their grief” (as if all those foreign nationals even care that some old timer has popped her clogs) our players are being treated like professionals and – more importantly – adults and getting on with it.
We have a massive game to play on Wednesday. Massive.
Thank God our players and our staff are wholly focussed on that, and that all the craziness around them hasn’t affected anything that we’re doing. Nor should it either. We live in the real world after all.
If they play mid week and get beat, they will say their hearts were not in it , if they don’t play and forfeit the points they will say after group stage they will say they did not get a chance. You could not write it.
I know what you mean about the people you heard on bbc news 24, the wife and I were in London for a week, and she wanted to see all the sites like you do. The Londoners etc talk and act like the Queen is there mum or gran, or aunt or something. It’s a way of life down there really. Glasgow is a goldfish bowl, and there is lots of bigotry up here, it was actually quite refreshing to be away from it for a while. You have Catholics down there who like the queen and the pope, it’s completely different down there. That’s 1 of the things that I can’t stand about glasgow, is the bigotry. I wish it would just go away.
People are entitled to their view, they can grieve if they wish. They also need to recognise however that many of us just don’t see it that way. The £1bn pound estate says everything we need to know about the inappropriateness of Royalty in a modern progressive country.
Also S Thomas you are right the bigotry in the West of Scotland (on both sides) is a disgrace.
Both sides??
Daily Mail reader right there
To state that there is the same bigotry from both sides is just wrong and a complete cop out. The Celtic Football Club has never discriminated against anybody on the grounds of Race or Religion unlike the club from Ibrox who discriminated against people on the grounds of their religion for around 100 years.
We all know that there is an element amongst the Celtic support who sing sectarian words to songs and this is an embarrassment to us all . There are walks and demonstrations throughout Central Scotland by the Orange Order that are clearly sectarian in nature.
You just had to listen to the sectarian vows taken by King Charles in London yesterday to realise how the UK is still stuck in the past. Someday I hope this country of Scotland becomes an Independent Secular Republic with freedom for people of religion or none. Unlike some people I don’t think the Orange Order dominate Scottish life and in the future they will be consigned to the history where they sprung from.
The Quexit of Kim Jong Queen will proceed with the usual toadying and public displays of forced grief that would put North Korea to shame.
From seeing visions of the deid wumman in cloud formations ( it actually looked more like Freddy Krueger than Mrs Gotha ), to stealing flowers from the local cemetery to place under the statue of John Greig, we will be forced to endure this boak inducing circus for the next 2 weeks.
Thank God for Netflix, Prime, Glasgow Celtic and alcohol.
Aye damm right the tribute at the tribute act will have stolen out the parks or cemetery by the subculture they would give vermin a bad name the zombie filth scum
Will they have a ceremony at grey skull when they take the oul wummins photie down? At least they’ll be able to say they don’t owe HER majesty money any more. HH
I see England are playing South Africa at the Oval today
£1billion pounds she stole…she was a crook, sinister af!!! glad she’s gone, now we need to deal with the peado king and his peado bros…c**ts!!!
Perfectly sums up my sentiments James…
Couldn’t agree more with everything you’ve written. Never have I witnessed such collective irrationality. Not even the voting of Tories by the working class comes close to this public display of mass absurdity we’re in the midst of. A friend of my wife summed up this madness when she stated that she was so stricken with grief that she “wept inconsolably for hours, even more than she had for her own parents” when she heard of Her Majesty’s death. no surprise that she’s a theRangers “follower”. This from a woman who works as a low paid domestic in the NHS. Mad dogs and Englishmen” comes to mind. Upon hearing that football was halted for a period of forced mourning I became disgruntled to say the least . Now, however, I am simply bemused, and becoming increasingly amused at the slavishly obsequious servility of the media and those from Ibrox.
…..” their players be spared having to “play through their grief…” They’ve been playing through their grief since they were founded 10 years ago
Now is the perfect time for Celtic FC to put light year distance between us and the Rangers ! It’s high time we had a ‘killer instinct ‘ attitude, which has been badly missing over the years ! If any one ever says both Glasgow clubs need each other, I’ll give a two word answer ! Boll – ox .
4gunsalute
The Unionists were saddened but now happy. Charles the turd (Irish pronunciation) has assured them, he will protect Protestantism in Scotland. How?. It is good that the young people of Britain can see on television the ritual of pander and grovel to one man who makes empty pledges to them.
Chaz is now Head of State of the U bloody K and all its Realms. IT”S REALMS ?. Not for long old son. The Realms have been waiting for their gracious Queen to pass. They are ready to remove you as their Head of State; to be replaced by one of their own, by election.
Long live Football ! Long live King Henrik of Celtic !
Absolutely brilliant. Please keep up the good work.
What a well written, balanced article. Cuts through the hype and hysteria. While acknowledging that a hard working, but extremely old lady has died, like any other death, we can express our condolences to her family, but, it does not affect bus on a personal level.
Excellent,well written piece.