Is that the secret?

I've just watched a bit of Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee on the TV. There is a part of me that feels quite tickled by the idea that I have lived during “the second Elizabethan age” as it was apparently heralded sixty years ago.

It's not as if it could have been called anything else, in the end. Despite all the other things have not gone right for the House of Windsor at times, the one constant is that tiny woman has just kept on “being the queen”. It is hard to imagine that the image of “Queen” could be anything other than Elizabeth II, but then I suppose that the same was said about her great-great-grandmother on her diamond jubilee.

There is a cynical part of me wonders to what extent a lot of the enthusiasm has been whipped up by the media, and to what extent just knowing that the Queen is doing her “queen thing” contributes to a sense of continuity to a national psyche. I could wish that we had something of the same here in Australia, though for the life of me, I cannot imagine what it could be – except possibly the Country Women's Association?!

I have to admit that the weather has been suitably British in that it seems to have rained a lot, and as is traditional, the British just carried on. I wonder if that is the secret … just carrying on, no matter what!