Getting Ready for Zombie Armageddon

OK, then; you’ve covered every contingency for the coming zombie apocalypse.  You have a good supply of food and water stored away.  You have your armoury all prepared; a shotgun or several and perhaps a collection of power tools and other useful implements.  You are an island; you are Legend.  Stop; think again; this is not the best way to save yourself or humanity from the contagion!

If you are taking this threat seriously – and who does not? – you really should have been in the town of Cheltenham in the west of England last week to hear Doctor Austin, a Theoretical Zombiologist (yes, that’s right), speak at the annual science festival.  Dr Austin, head of the Zombie Institute for Theoretical Studies (ZITS), was most illuminating.  “There are a lot of misconceptions about zombies”, he said, “If a zombie does appear, people need to treat them as a person with an illness.”

Right.  There are other things that you might not be aware of; in fact I’m virtually sure you are in total ignorance, as was I.  Do you think that zombies have rotting flesh?  Well, you are wrong.  The thing is, you see, if they did they would, well, not see.  They would, in other words, decompose quickly beyond their ‘best before’ rampage date.  Dr Austin rightly pointed out a zombie whose eyes had been eaten by maggots would not get very far.  He went on to say that;

Once you become a zombie you will live for three to six months.  The time will vary depending on age weight and whether you live near people with chainsaws. 

The good doctor continued in this vein, explaining that the apocalypse will be spread by biting, a practice the scientific literature agrees that zombies are particularly keen on. There would seem to be obvious similarities to rabies.  Hey, but hold on a minute; other zombie symptoms, shuffling, moaning and generally not caring much about one’s appearance, suggests another comparison.  Yes, indeed; we are in the realm of Variant CJD, more popularly known as Mad Cow Disease.  In future it may very well be called Mad Zombie Disease, MZD for short.

Actually, all kidding aside, ‘Dr Austin’, who mostly lectures to schoolchildren, was making serious points about biological science.  The zombie format of his talk was really just a hook to get people interested in different aspects of virology;

Usually when you lecture on illness someone in the audience might have had it, or been affected.  Because there are no zombies at the moment, no one is going to be upset and say, “Oh, my mum died of that.”

At the moment?…hmm; what on earth is he going to talk about when they do appear?  I suppose werewolves or vampires might serve as a possible alternative.  On second thoughts it probably won’t matter.  After all, we will be far too busy careering through the streets or hiding away in attics to attend science festivals, no matter how illuminating.  

On further reflection I’m not at all sure about Dr Austin’s credentials, or with what authority he speaks on behalf of ZITS.  He says that there are no zombies at the moment, which leads me to suppose that he might very well be a zombie himself.  If I could only rid myself of that unhappy thought I would gladly take him by the hand and lead him through the streets of London.  I’ll show him something that’s bound to change his mind. 

Same as the old Boss

Egypt is moving forward into the past.  Yesterday and today the country has been voting in the final round of the presidential election, a sort of take it or leave it choice between two equally uninspiring candidates – Mohammed Morsy, a colourless brother of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Ahmed Safiq, a brother from the old Mubarak fraternity. 

Safiq, a former air force commander, is the favoured candidate of the state within a state that has governed Egypt for generations, no matter if the outward face was Nasser, Sadat or Mubarak.  We had a clear indication of the shape of things to come on Friday, when Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, a collection of Ancien Régime stalwarts, dissolved the country’s first freely elected parliament, claiming voting irregularities.  All at once power reverted to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). 

Actually it’s all a bit of a joke; they never really lost power in the first place.  What we have seen since the fall of Hosni Mubarak last year is a game being played out at the expense of the people of Egypt, with SCAF on one side, the Brothers on the other.  In terms of popular support the Brothers appear strong, but appearance is nothing in this land of the sphinx, a land where power comes not from a popular mandate but the barrel of a gun.  Last month I concluded an article (Old Soldiers Never Die, 13 May) with the following words;

Whatever the outcome of the election nothing much is likely to change.  The state within a state will continue to govern the state.  Old soldiers never die.  In Egypt they don’t even fade away.

They certainly do not.  There is Field Marshall Tantawi, head of SCAF and Egypt’s éminence grise, who will continue to exercise power regardless of any popular vote.  There is Ahmed Shafiq, a man who previously let it slip that he was the army’s preferred candidate, not at all reluctant to praise Mubarak and criticise protesters, not at all reluctant to scare Egyptians with the prospect of an Iranian-style Islamist state if the Brotherhood wins.  He has pledged to rule with an ‘iron fist’; he has pledged to defend what he calls the ‘deep state’.  He has pledged to be, well, Hosni Mubarak. 

My, how depressingly predictable it all is.  Even before the dissolution of parliament, a coup in all but name, SCAF issued decrees granting officers the right to try civilians in military courts, a return to three decades of martial law that was allowed to lapse for a mere two weeks. 

If Shafiq wins all well and good: it will just be business as usual.  But if Morsy comes top then we shall see; we shall see how the ‘deep state’ reacts.  It will not be with equanimity, that much is certain.  I can give you one possible scenario.  Parliament has gone.  The President can only be sworn in by parliament.  Without such affirmation he is powerless.  Egypt is in a constitutional deadlock.  Into the breach comes…I think it safe to leave you to draw your own conclusion. 

It seems obvious that the dissolution of parliament on the eve of the presidential election was really a cue for the Brothers to leave the stage, withdrawing in protest, allowing Safiq to walk in to office by acclimation, a new Pharaoh.  They have not, so stage two of the counter-revolution in the revolution that was never a revolution is already in preparation.  The reintroduction of military courts is a clear preamble to a general declaration of martial law.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. 

I'll Tip My Hat To The New Constitution
Take A Bow For The New Revolution
Smile And Grin At The Change All Around
Pick Up My Guitar And Play
Just Like Yesterday
Then I'll Get On My Knees And Pray
We Don't Get Fooled Again
Don't Get Fooled Again
No, No!

Lessons of History

Everything in history occurs twice, so said Hegel and Marx.  Actually history very rarely repeats itself, at least not in the way we expect.  One would be wise not to read the lessons of history because the lessons are invariably wrong. 

After the Second World War the politicians and bureaucrats, washed up on the shores of a European desert, thought that the best thing to do was escape from the past; to escape, as they perceived it, from the nationalism that had brought the Continent so low. 

Out of the ashes arose a new phoenix - the European Community, carrying on the wing the ideal of a more perfect union.  It was nothing of the kind; it was an arrogant fantasy from the outset, one that sought to turn a geographical expression into a political reality.  Nationalism, like a wicked genie, was forced into a bottle.  Latterly democracy, an embarrassment for the Euro elite, was likewise being forced into a bottle, but both have burst forth in springtime of anger. 

My attention was drawn to an article by Ed West in the Telegraph recently, with a particularly apt headline – Europe’s post-Nazi stress disorder has brought it to ruin.  It’s a timely reminder of the realities of history and the blindness of the architects of the grand illusion.  The military historian Anthony Beevor is quoted, airing the obvious;

The great European dream was to diminish militant nationalism. We would all be happy Europeans together. But we are going to see the old monster of militant nationalism being awoken when people realise how little control their politicians have. We are already seeing political disintegration in Europe.

In that same article a panicky open letter published in the Guardian is also quoted, written in the dawn of Golden Dawn, the fascist heavy metal brigade which is on the threshold of entering the Greek parliament.  It was headed We are all Greek Jews now, presumably meaning the readers of the Guardian and not the Golden Boys:

We invite all citizens, political parties, unions, civil society, intellectuals and artists to fight the extreme right by promoting and bringing to life the European dream. We must always remember that this dream was built on the ruins of Nazism. We must never forget about the Shoah. Our dream is of a continent free from racism and anti-Semitism. It is the project of a society based on "togetherness" – beyond boundaries.

Second, we must refute the dogma of "the European fortress", which favours the spread of anti-immigrant speeches and the lockdown of Europe's frontiers, especially when a core element of European post-war identity – its social welfare system – requires the economic input of immigration to remain sustainable.

Actually it’s this sort of meretricious rubbish that is responsible for the present malaise.  The authors simply cannot see that it was the attempt to promote and bring to life ‘the European dream’ which has turned out to be a European nightmare.  Yes, a nightmare, of nations and peoples with wholly different traditions and widely different economies being moulded into One.  The people of the Continent were kidnapped by Procrustes, who proceeded to cut or stretch them into shape.  Rather appropriate, don’t you agree, that a figure from Greek mythology, should serve as the supreme European architect? 

One Golden Dawn does not make a Nazi summer.  It’s the ignorance that strikes me, the utter incomprehension.  It would seem that the only way of guarding against the past is the ‘European ideal’, the only way of guarding Europeans against themselves.  But, as West rightly says, the ‘European ideal’ is not failing because of a collection of laughable Greek heavies; it’s failing because as a vision it’s totally unworkable.  It could only work in the absence of democracy, by new forms of centralised tyranny that the ‘European idea’ was set up to guard against.  Ah, there’s the rub, there’s the paradox. 

A Europe where centuries of difference and inherited tradition were conjured into nothingness, a Europe where uncontrolled immigration has threatened the livelihood and identity of its indigenous peoples, was heading sooner or later for a great fall, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t put it back together again. 

Did you note that point by the Guardianistas about social welfare systems?  No, I don’t understand what they are on about either, unless they mean that it is a sign of economic vibrancy for a country to attract hordes of foreign welfare claimants.  The irony is that their dream of a Continent of unrestricted movement, without boundaries, a Continent of ‘togetherness’ is the very thing that has increased anti-Semitism and racism of all kinds.  When people are ignored, when their concerns are ignored, marginal views begin to move in from the cold. 

West mentions his grandfather, who fought in the Second World War.  Both of mine did, one in the Far East and the other in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean.  They had a clear idea of what they were fighting for; they had a clear idea of what was right and what was wrong.  West writes of his grandfather “I suspect that, were he to see Britain and Europe today, he would conclude that it was in the grips of collective insanity.”

I don’t suspect; I simply know all of my grandparents would be horrified by the direction that our history has taken; horrified by the insanity that grips contemporary Europe, as bad as past insanity, only different.  That’s the lesson of history.  

China’s Well of Loneliness

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young, and a Chinese woman, was very heaven.  It’s not so hot, though, if you are male.  The girls in China are in a sellers market, with plenty of boys only too anxious to buy…if they can afford the price of entry.  The sad truth is that there are boys being born today in China who will never marry, who will never find the right girl, because there are simply not enough girls to go around.

For over twenty years the Chinese authorities have operated a one child policy as a way of controlling a burgeoning population.  When this is combined with a traditional preference for male children, thus ensuring the preservation of the family name, a preference that has seen the widespread abortion of female foetuses, a major demographic imbalance has resulted.  The sad irony is that family names will die out anyway in the absence of wives for only sons.

The shortage of women is bad enough.  What makes it worse is the ‘reverse dowry’ system that operates across much of rural China.  Bachelors are generally expected to have a minimum of 80 thousand Yuan (about $12000) to allow them to set up a home with their prospective wives.  In peasant communities few men can ever hope to command such personal wealth.  Inevitably this will draw more and more people towards the cities, there creating even greater social problems.

On the latest projections demographers estimate that there will be a surplus of 50 million men by the end of the present decade alone.  This will mean millions of lives unshared.  In the absence of the forms of social stability brought about by marriage crime and disorder are likely to increase to unprecedented levels. 

Commenting on this Li Jianmin, the head of the Institute of Population and Development Research at Nankai University, said that “The gender imbalance trend started showing in the early 1980s, and now we have just walked over the threshold.  In five to ten years, the high risk period will come.”  Andrea Den Bores, a demographer, also warned of the long-term implications of China’s new population crisis in her book Bare Bones:

It is difficult to be optimistic because while the China knows that this problem exists, it does not appear to have any plan.  There is a strong potential building for future violence and unrest and so far the Chinese authorities have not developed a response to these issues other than violent ones. 

Thomas Malthus, the gloomy prophet of population Armageddon, continues to be relevant, though not in ways that he had anticipated.  In his classic An Essay on the Principle of Population he talks of the unhappy people who, in the great lottery of life, have drawn a blank.  Many Chinese men are looking into a future that is no more than a deep well of loneliness.    Nature is finely balanced.  We interfere with its mechanisms at huge peril. 

A Tale Unfolds

Keith Lowe’s Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II is an important book. Yes, yes, I know; you’ve heard it all before, the special pleading on behalf of some new publication or other, but believe me, it is. 

Actually, no, don’t believe me; don’t take my word for it; read it and find out for yourself. If you think that the Second World War in Europe ended abruptly in May, 1945; if you think that VE Day brought peace then you are in for a surprise. I was reminded of some words from the Book of Jeremiah;

They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

Considering the important weighting I’m giving here it’s a book that I almost did not read. A few years ago I read Giles Macdonogh’s After the Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift. I rather assumed that Savage Continent was essentially covering the same territory, namely the post-war trauma of Germany. It does; it touches on the savage expulsion of millions of Germans from the eastern territories handed over to the Poles at Potsdam and Yalta, and from their former homes in the Czech Sudetenland. But Lowe deals with so much more, not just a traumatised people but a traumatised Continent; he deals with the traumas of places as far apart and as diverse as Estonia and Greece.

We are dealing here with political, social, economic and moral chaos; we are dealing with the abyss, the nadir of human civilization. We are dealing with starvation, lawlessness, disruption, homelessness, rootlessness, alienation, murder and rape on an unprecedented scale in all of history. We are dealing with racial wars and ethnic cleansing that did not end with the Nazis. We are dealing with an ugliness of unbelievable intensity. 

In some places the hatred and violence that emerged in the war and immediate post-war period never really went away. The former Yugoslavia is a case in point, where ethnic and racial tensions engendered by the conflict were submerged for decades, only to break out once more with unrestrained ferocity in the 1990s, a reminder of how difficult it is to escape from the past.

It’s not all about statistics and numbers, not all about mass suffering; there are also some sobering personal anecdotes. There is the story of an eighteen-year-old Polish Jew by the name of Roman Halter. He had survived Auschwitz. It’s May 1945; the war is over; the danger is past; he is free, emaciated, but free. He began a long walk east, leaving from Dresden, hoping to find others of his family who had survived the Holocaust. 

On the way he met a Russian soldier, whom he greeted as a comrade and a liberator. The friendly gesture was not returned. Instead the Russian ordered him to take his trousers down. Having ascertained that he was a Jew he put his revolver to Halter’s head and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired. The memory of this incident stayed with Halter for the rest of his life. Anti-Semitism had not died with Hitler.

The sad truth is, as Lowe shows, that hatred of the Jews actually increased after the war, leading to murderous pogroms in Hungary and Poland. It wasn’t the industrial scale, biology-based mass murder of the Nazis, but rather a return to more atavist and medieval forms of Jew-hatred. It was this, perhaps even more than the Holocaust, which led many Jews to conclude that they had no future in Europe. 

There are other stories which, in their own way, are just as shocking, because they are less expected. There is the story of the Norwegian children, some three thousand of whom were born to women who had relationships with German soldiers during the occupation. Afterwards the assumption was that the women must have been mentally sub-normal and the soldiers they attracted also mentally sub-normal. For years afterwards the children born to these people were subject to levels of ostracism and discrimination that had a severe impact on their life chances. Compared with some of the other horror stories detailed in this book it amounts to little, though it tends to undermine one’s view of the seemingly limitless nature of Scandinavian tolerance.

There was so much in Lowe’s account of Stunde Null (wrongly given as Stunde nul) – Zero Hour – , as the German referred to the end of the war, that I had no knowledge of at all. I knew nothing of the vicious racial war between the Poles and the Ukrainians, pursued both during and after the war, with consequences even so far as today. I knew nothing about the struggles of the Forest Brotherhood, the freedom fighters in the Baltic States, who went on to resist the Soviet occupiers for years after the war, people who were still being killed as late as 1978. 

The author’s whole account us tremendously illuminating, as the dust settled and the great post-war divisions between the communist east and the free west began to take shape. It’s as well to remember that for many in the east the story of oppression and occupation did not end in 1945; rather one tyranny simply took the place of another. 

Communism has gone now. We have a Brave New Europe that has such free peoples in it. Ah, but that’s just the thing. Our Europe, the Europe of the European Community, is driven more by fear of the past than hope for the future. Recently we have had all sorts of dire warnings over what might happen if the euro collapses. Hence we have a bureaucratic, post-democratic New Order. It is the architects of this New Order, in their distrust of the people, who are paradoxically recreating forms of popular discontent that led to disaster in the first place.

So, yes, this is an important book, important if you want to understand the European present as well as the European past. It is cogent, well-written and well-argued account, if over-reliant at points on anecdotal evidence. The only thing that irritates me is the author’s tendency to drop into the first person singular. It is as if he is a tour guide taking us on a journey, a technique which for me is wholly out of place in a sober historical narrative. But if it is a journey we have come far. If you want to know how far, come and see; come and read.

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.

IL Magnifico

If you come to Florence for the first time, a city you may have visited previously in art and imagination, there is one supreme moment of epiphany.  It is not a place that surrenders easily, unlike Rome and Venice.  But there you are, right in the centre, walking along narrow streets unknown to you.  

It's the evening of your first day.  You have not long arrived, driving up from Rome.  You are tired.  But life is short; you want to explore before going to bed, using every drop squeezed from the fruit of time.  You turn into a narrow and rising alley for pedestrians only.  On both sides are goldsmiths’ shops, so close together that you almost feel that you could reach out and touch both sides.  You reach the top of the incline.  There are no more shops.  The vista is free.  There is the River Arno.  You are at the top of the Ponte Vecchio - the Old Bridge.  This is your A Room With A View moment!  

This is the city of Dante, of the Medici, of Botticelli, of Donatello, of Machiavelli, of Savonarola, of Michelangelo and so many others.  It's a city of poets and painters, of soldiers and bankers, of prophets and outcasts.  It's where the Renaissance was born, in a place still suffused with its traces.  There is a romance to Florence, sensual, yes, but something else, something divine.  Here Dante saw Beatrice (say it in Italian: bet-reach-eeh.  It's so much more beautiful than the English pronunciation) He fell in love with perfection, and perfection was what she remained, near yet distant, adored yet unattainable.  It was by the banks of the Arno that they met for the last time, the briefest of brief encounters.  She died eight years later, aged only twenty-four.  She was his salvation, destined to live forever in one of the greatest poetic epics ever penned.

Florence is an impossible place, impossible to absorb in a few days.  I think perhaps it would take a lifetime to experience and understand all it has to offer!  I can only give you a small sampler.  Once again I visited the two Davids, Donatello's in bronze at the Bargello Museum, and Michelangelo’s marble giant in the Academia Gallery.  The later is an expression of power and virtue, a political statement, a symbol of the Florentine Republic after the Medici were temporarily cast aside.  I love it but it has an intimidating quality.  I far prefer Donatello's much more intimate creation.  Yes, I know the two are not comparable in terms of size, technique or purpose, but the bronze David, free of politics, is just so sensual, so beautiful, so superbly and simply erotic!  

To the Uffizi now, principally to see the work of Botticelli, my favourite Renaissance painter.  You've probably seen illustrations of Primavera and The Birth of Venus, but how marvellous it is to stand before them, captivating, sublime and mysterious.  I'm not presumptuous enough to hazard an interpretation of Primavera; I leave that to others.  It just thrills me.  I think the figure of Flora, off to the right, is another dimension of perfection and sensual beauty, this time in a female form.  

We had a room with a view, a view of the Duomo, the central cathedral, topped by the magnificent dome designed and built in the fifteenth century by Filippo Brunelleschi.  It was a reflection of his talent and of the grandeur of Florence.  There is another view, right at the top, a God's eye view of the city, all laid out before you.   Be warned though: the ascent from the inside of the dome is not for the feint of heart!  From the gallery I looked down to the interior far below, the place where Savonarola once preached to a congregation of thousands at the height of his power.

Not far from here is the Baptistery, the oldest building in the city, dating back to the sixth century.  Enter through the wonderful east doors, by long tradition known as The Gates of Paradise, only to be confronted, looking up to the ceiling, by the Gates of Hell!  It's breathtaking mosaic in a medieval Byzantine style, dominated by the central figure of Christ.  This is the Last Judgement, with a fearsome demon consuming the damned.  The place is busy but try, if you can, to lie on your back looking up, even only for a moment or two.

Of course it wasn’t all art and culture.  We picnicked in the park.  We dined by starlight.  There is a wonderful restaurant not far from the Ponte Vecchio where I had wild boar served with polenta, soft and succulent, complemented by some local wine.  Alas, all dreams end.  We flew back this afternoon from Pisa, back to grey old London making ready for an Olympic party.  I feel, though, that I have just descended from Mount Olympus!  

Vivat Regina!

She was only eleven years old when she was confronted with her future destiny.  It wasn’t something she wanted or welcomed, a little girl interested in the things that little girls are interested in.  For many nights thereafter, as she told her grandmother, her mother’s mother, she prayed for a little brother, someone to come and relieve her of the burden.  Her prayers, thankfully, were not answered.  She was Lilibet; she became Elizabeth; she is our Queen.

England is having a party.  This week we celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, sixty years on the throne, only the second time in our history that we have seen such an occasion, the first being for Queen Victoria in 1897.  But then Victoria, for so long in morbid isolation and declining in health, was the ghost at the party, the ghost of a passing age.  Not so Elizabeth, as active, as involved, as committed and as dutiful as ever. 

It was in 1947, when she was only twenty-one years old, that she made a promise to Britain, to the Empire, to the Commonwealth and to the world.  She was in South Africa at the time.  With the radio microphone before her she said “It is very simple.  I declare before you that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.”  It was five years later she came to the throne, suddenly and unexpectedly, following the death of George VI, her beloved father. 

And so it has been.  The Empire has gone, falling away bit by bit, but for the most part without bitterness or acrimony.  One by one former colonies emerged as self-governing republics, though still bound together with Britain in a Commonwealth of interest and affection for the Queen, a rock and a symbol above all petty politics.  I remember when I was in Uganda, there told of a past state visit, when the people of Kampala came out to greet Her Majesty in thousands. 

We should be grateful for all that she represents, for her continuity and for her strength.  I have the latest edition of the Spectator in front of me.  There, on the front cover, she can be seen in an illustration by the cartoonist Peter Brookes,  She is looking at portraits of all of the Prime Ministers of her reign, right back to 1952.  There are twelve in all, counting Harold Wilson’s two ministries as one, beginning with Winston Churchill (he headed a post-war ministry) and ending with David Cameron.  I say ending but I am convinced she will see more before the day is done!

The Queen quite simply is the Queen, recognised as such across the world.  Even in the United States, where she has never reigned, she has an approval rating of over 60%, far in excess of the President, having long since made up for the perceived misdemeanours of her ancestor George III.  Even in England, as we have moved from an age of deference to an age of vulgarity, she has stood like a rock, one upon which every republican tide has broken.

We challenge the institution of monarchy at our peril.  It defines who and what we are in this country.  I revere Queen Elizabeth not for what she says, or what she believes, or what she does – it’s simply for who she is and what she represents.  She is consistency and stability in the midst of change.  We have come to despise politicians as much as we revere the Queen.  The very idea of a republic with an elected head of state, a Tony Blair or a David Cameron, would, I imagine, give most English people nightmares.  It certainly gives me nightmares. 

Yes, we challenge monarchy at our peril.  I was eleven years old when Princess Diana died.  I still remember the mawkish outburst of sentimentality; I still remember the displays of emotion that shamed this nation, shallow, gay and fey.  I still remember my grandfather’s comments on the irresponsibility of the press, voicing gratuitous criticisms of the monarchy in general and the Queen in particular.  Once again it exercised the prerogative of the harlot throughout history: power without responsibility.  Elizabeth II survived it all; she survived the fashions of a season, growing stronger, the People’s Monarch in a deeper sense than the ghastly Tony Blair could ever comprehend.

I’m under no illusions about our present condition and future predicament.  I do not share the sentiments of Boris Johnson and others in the press in their over-the-top celebration of a new Elizabethan Age.  This is an age of decline; we have, with the brief intermission of Margaret Thatcher, been in decline as a nation for decades.  The future does not look good, shackled as we are to the Sick Man of the European Union.  But, for a moment or two, we shall take time out; we shall enjoy the spectacle of a wonderful pageant on the Thames. We shall fiddle while Europe burns! 

Anyway, I am getting set to carry the good news from England to Italy.  I leave tomorrow morning, spending my Jubilee week in Rome and Florence.  Have a super time, one and all, and declare with me, Vivat Regina! Vivat Regina Elizabetha! Vivat! Vivat! Vivat!