The Coronation Shortages

It’s one of those clichés dusted off with the bunting at every big ceremonial occasion. We’ve all heard it during a lull in the ermine-cloaked action. Three hours we’ll have spent waiting for a Range Rover to move ten feet, a butler to lower St Archibald’s rod, or a procession to deliver Scotland’s National Thistle to the Abbey, and then the camera will briefly cut to Hugh Edwards playing with his earpiece from his perch on top of a treasured national monument/David Dimbleby. 

“It’s likely that this is the last time we’ll see an event with this much fanfare and ceremony,” he’ll coo, swivelling in his chair whilst giving his quiff a quick cat treat to keep it calm.

He’ll then, of course, use the same words at the next big ceremonial occasion when he’s perched on top of a different national monument/Jonathan Dimbleby. Alastair Bruce will agree and say something about the late Queen Mother, usually an anecdote involving a bottle of sherry, a shotgun, and a former Archbishop of Canterbury. We know how it goes. We’ve all grown up with the BBC documenting these big occasions. We know how to draw a BBC interstitial graphic before we can even write our names.

Yet in the case of the coronation of King Charles next month, we’re in for a change and Edwards will likely have to find new and interesting things to say during those twelve-hour lulls in the coverage. The simple fact is that the coronation will be nothing like that of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. Everything is in short supply. The nation is suffering from a deficit in ceremonial staples. 

For a start, we haven’t enough middle-of-the-road balladeers who are free on a Saturday night. The nation is down to its last Elton John and a replacement can’t be found in time. The shipbuilders on the Clyde have a reputation for fast work but even they can’t fabricate that quickly. This news comes on top of reports that there won’t be enough Spice Girls to form a quorum, and it’s rumoured that Palace planners have now gone down the list far enough to enquire about the availability of Black Lace. The nation might have to sing in the new King with “Agadoo”.

Agadoo doo doo, push Camilla, bend the knee
Agadoo doo doo, push Camilla, she’s our Queen?
To the left, to the right, jump up and down and courtesy
Come and dance every night, sing the coronation melody…

We can, however, dismiss the rumoured shortage of American presidents. Joe Biden is not coming but it would have been unusual if he did. It would have made him the first US president to attend a coronation. And let’s not forget that British monarchs have never attended presidential inaugurations. It’s a bipartisan agreement that goes back centuries, ensuring no leader has to sit through a long tedious ceremony that isn’t their own.

More shocking is the news that there will be a shortage of royals. This is a non-trivial problem. If it sometimes feels like royals reproduce like jackrabbits, the truth is that they’re in decline due to natural wastage. There is already a shortage of Sussexes and we also must address the problem of what to do with Prince Andrew. If only his enthusiasms hadn’t been so misdirected. The coming years will see a shortage of Dukes and Duchesses and you can’t suddenly fill that skill gap overnight. It takes twenty years to train somebody to shake a hand, whilst some skills, like asking “So, what do you do?”, cannot be taught. It’s in the blood, don’t you know?

And then we get to the most worrying shortage of all: the national deficit in the number of bell ringers. The plan is to have every church in the country ring its bells for three and a half hours on the day, which is going to make the shortage of headache tablets even more acute, as well as play havoc with all the climbing walls erected in church steeples across the land. It’s suggested that the nation’s ringers will have to dash between churches to keep the bells going, but is the country ready for a campanologist edition of The Fast and the Furious to play out on the nation’s roads as bell ringers are ferried in high-speed police vehicles between churches? (Note to self: there has to be a film idea in this…)

Yet there is a serious side to these shortages and it’s about a nation that has changed immeasurable since the last coronation in 1953. And dare one say that rather than being a sign of a nation in decline it’s a sign of a nation finding itself in a better place?

A scaled-back monarchy is the future of the monarchy (if, indeed, the monarchy is going to have any future). More suits and fewer gowns; less ceremony and more serotonin – the royal family need to learn to smile and connect with ordinary folk rather existing in the thin and miserly vacuum of celebrities and hangers-on. They need fewer Bublés and not as many baubles.

This coronation will be the first measure of whether they can begin to learn this lesson and reflect the values of the twenty-first century rather than the fourteenth. As for the shortage of bellringers, who doesn’t love to hear a peel of church bells? Yet it’s another of those skills that everybody hopes we can retain but nobody wants to do themselves. Those complaining the loudest might want to consider why they don’t volunteer to pull a rope for a sweaty three and a half hours in their local bell tower. Would King Charles like to pull an old clapper? (Stop the sniggering at the back! We know all the jokes. We wrote most of them…)

Say it quietly but ask the question: maybe some of these shortages don’t mark an absence but a disappearing need and that is not always a bad thing.

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