Thursday, 8 September, 2022 – Queen Elizabeth II died today. Elias, Ian, and Kelsey are still in Newcastle and I cannot tell from his brief text exchange with David if he registered the historic-ness of the moment. There’s no reason he should, I guess. He’s 22, American, not an Anglophile, and definitely holds no great affection for the monarchy. He would be more upset if something happened to Julia Roberts, I think it’s safe to say.
David: Quite a time to be in the UK. What’s happening in Newcastle?
Elias: Yeah it should be very interesting. I’m not sure what newcastle will be like but we’re going to London for 48 hours on Saturday so I’m sure there will be stuff going on there.
David: 70 years on the throne. The whole nation will be mourning. A history-making time to be in the UK. I can only imagine the flowers and other memorials that will be piled around Buckingham Palace. Should be some great photo ops the next few days.
Rebekah: Wow yeah. What a time to be there! Poor royal family
Elias: Yeah I’m not sure what’ll happen here since it’s a small city but buckingham will definitely have stuff out when we go on Sunday.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the newspapers in Newcastle to see what the coverage looks like. Here’s a screenshot.
Not surprisingly, every news post on the homepage was related to the Queen. In looking at other areas of the UK, most of the cities had an image gallery of the times the Queen visited; Newcastle’s. Edinburgh, Wales, Aberdeen, Manchester all had “when the Queen came here” pictures, showing her visiting the opening of a new art center, or bridge, or train line. After looking at a few of the things she had to do over the years, I have to say the job looks a little less glamorous than I imagined.
In any case, I do hope Elias gets some pictures of London in mourning. If only because years from now, he will be reminded of being in Britain at such a momentous time and be glad he got a little different perspective on it. When I was studying in Hong Kong, Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in The Philippines and Cory Aquino rose to power. Of course, from Hong Kong, I did not have the proximity that Elias has now but I felt some affinity with The Philippines because we had lived there in the late 1960s, when my father was stationed at Clark Air Base. There are so many Filipino nationals who live in Hong Kong, and the news ran updates of the coup for several days, incessantly. At the time, it was not clear what was going to happen, who would succeed in the power struggle, and the chaos and tumult felt very close by and earth-shattering. There were Filipino citizens on the faculty at the language school where I studied; on the breaks between classes, they would stand together and intently watch the TV, scanning the crowds for faces they recognized.
Looking back, I can see that watching the revolution in The Philippines affected me more than I realized at the time. Even now, when I watch something happening across the world, like the Arab Spring, or toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein, or even the Black Lives Matter protests, I think back to watching a change of power happen in Manila and remember that what looks like a riot from the outside may be making real, permanent change.