The Queen’s platinum jubilee was less than a year ago, in June 2022. That makes Saturday’s coronation – or the “Corry Nash,” as it seems decided to call it – the third major royal event in a year after the funeral the Queen in September. An unofficial shortening of national events is a regular part of life in Britain: the platinum jubilee was the platty jubes, and even the country’s current livelihood crisis has earned the impossibly silly moniker of ‘the cozzy livs’. But outside, in the brutal rain in London during Saturday’s coronation, the appellation “Corry Nash” seems particularly grim.
I knew that trying to get down The Mall, one of the main streets leading to Buckingham Palace, on the morning of the coronation would be a futile endeavor. People who enjoy being the center of royal events have had two opportunities to hone their techniques over the past 12 months: how many hours to camp beforehand, what provisions to take, where the best vantage points are. A friend of mine walking down the mall late one night saw a man on a camp bed who had made himself comfortable for the night, wrapped head to toe in a Union Jack blanket, looking like a dead soldier at his own funeral.
Instead, on Saturday morning I opt for one of the Royal Parks in the center of the city, where large screens are set up to show television coverage, including the procession of the King in his golden carriage from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey The service itself takes place. When I get down at 9:30 am, Green Park is completely closed: it’s too crowded. Instead, a few thousand other people hoping to see the trial and I are herded into Hyde Park, where I shuffle through central London in the rain. Many of my fellow hikers are adorned with British regalia of a completely novel kind: any kind of Union Jack-printed hat you want to name, flag-printed dresses, various paper and plastic tiaras for the girls, and crowns for the boys, some of which are I I’m pretty sure it came from Burger King. There’s a lot of preachers down here, too. A man just outside Hyde Park is holding a sign that reads “Repent, Confess Jesus is Lord” in pink highlighter, wrapped in cling film against the rain. “Get ready for the coming of King Jesus, it’s going to be awful, awful,” he calls out to the motionless crowd. I feel sorry for the stunned Spanish family in matching raincoats who happen to ask a steward how much of London is closed because of all this. “Actually all tourist places,” he has to tell them.
“Aimless guy, huh, talking to flowers and stuff,” someone tells me about Charles.
A lot of people around me had intentions of getting a fair bit closer to the action and didn’t expect to be herded like cattle trying to get onto the big screens. “That’s a shame. Why haven’t we been told?” Someone is complaining to his girlfriend, although it’s not clear from whom he might have learned that the one-time coronation of a new monarch could draw crowds. “I get anti-monarchists when you see this. We’re being surrounded. While they’re bringing money into the country I was all for it, but you know what, fuck them,” rants another, although he admits he’s mostly moody for not having a pee before leaving the house. There’s not much signal so people are gathering around the stranger who managed to get the procession of the royal carriage from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey on their phone.
Finally we make our way into the park and over to one of the big screens in time to see the start of the coronation service. The mood here is boisterous, but subdued not least because of the weather. There are families who make touchingly unsuccessful attempts at picnics – wet blankets on the ground, cuddled up in full rain ponchos around a damp pack of sausage rolls.
This is far from the best place to see the ceremony itself in detail, which people across the country will be watching warm and dry in their own living rooms. Why did all these people decide to come out and watch it in public? It doesn’t seem to show her undying support for Charles. I meet Debbie, Denise and Penny, three women in their 60s who have traveled from the south coast for the day and have apologized for not being able to offer me pink prosecco because they ran out of plastic cups. I ask them what they think of Charles and they all look at each other suspiciously. There is a break. “Um… well, he cares a lot about the environment, doesn’t he? That’s good,” says Debbie. “An aimless guy, huh, talking to flowers and stuff,” someone else tells me. “He doesn’t make a single decision in his life,” sneered another.
There are many people down here who just see this as an opportunity for what is affectionately referred to locally as a “bag of cans”: an excuse to buy beer and drink. One such group, three guys in their late 20s, offer me a Birra Moretti and tell me they just came down to “get involved”. “It’s mainly a social one,” said one of them. I’ll leave them to argue with each other about joining the oath of allegiance to the king that will later be part of the ceremony. Jack and Emily have come down from Leeds and are also nursing pints. “I really don’t know why we’re here,” Jack tells me cheerfully. “I think we’ll only get two of these.” A little girl in a sequined Union Jack T-shirt kills time throwing unimaginable shapes to Handel’s Zadok the Priest.
Others feel stronger here. Ben and Anna met while queuing to get into Hyde Park. They both came alone and thus formed a friendship. “Nobody in my household was interested in it,” she says, “but it’s the only sense of Britishness we really have, coming out for stuff like that.”
I think there’s a strange attraction to historical events like this coronation: people are drawn to them without really knowing why. Wanting to be a bit close, being able to say later that you were there, even if “there” just means standing in a park in the rain two kilometers away from the actual event. But it’s an odd opportunity for a number of reasons. If, like me, you’re opposed to the monarchy, there’s something depressing about expressing so many seemingly uncritical and uncomplicated positive sentiments about the existence of royals in one place. Across the city, protesters are being arrested for daring to express anti-monarchist sentiments, and online people are busily posting the biggest hits of British royal hatred (like actor Christopher Eccleston’s infamous Instagram post about the Queen, captioned “Parasite in Chief with her idiot hat”).
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Let me just describe the crazy spectacle that will unfold when King Charles is crowned
But even if you don’t hate the royals, I would argue it feels weird. At the top of a screen, a centuries-old ceremony of immense historical importance is taking place, and below, people are at a loss as to what to do with themselves: watch respectfully in silence, or treat it like a sleepy afternoon at a music festival. There is a wave of ooos as the crown is lifted and a cheer as it smashes onto Charles’ head. At one point, the Archbishop of Canterbury invites viewers at home to join him in saying “God save the King,” which everyone gathered here in the park duly does. “A little karaoke, nice,” says a woman.
It’s longer than people thought it would take. After the actual coronation, many visitors look up at the gray clouds and around at their friends and decide that now is a good time to check out. A grumpy child slams a helium balloon into the mud in the shape of Charles’ famously swollen fingers. And so ends another classic British public event: slightly underwhelming, absurdly dated and, best of all, rainy.
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