A day of brilliant sunshine all over the country starting the celebration of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee with an extra day's Bank Holiday. I posted today's Morning Prayer link to WhatsApp at half past seven, but didn't get up for breakfast until an hour later. Before going out to church, I drafted my Sunday sermon, not ashamed to include a few insights from Lucy Winket's well crafted Jubilee 'Thought for the Day'. The streets were as quiet as a Sunday morning when I walked to St John's for the Eucharist. There were only five of us, and I think I may have been the only one old enough to remember the Queen's coronation.
We didn't watch the Jubilee celebrations broadcast live from London at midday. I had a video editing job to finish and send to Rachel, and audio to record and edit for next week's Morning Prayer video. After lunch we took the bus into town to see if the Central Market was open to buy some stocks of fish, but inevitably as a City Council run enterprise, it was closed for the holiday. The streets were quite busy with shoppers taking advantage of a day off. There were events down in Cardiff Bay as well, with HMS Severn, a Navy coastal patrol vessel in port, and the Royal Welch Regimental band giving a concert outside the Millennium Centre.
We had a drink in John Lewis' top floor restaurant, and then walked home along the Taff, I got some lovely photos of a heron fishing and pair of swans with their brood of five cygnets swimming quite close to the river bank. Spot the fifth one in shadow!
In the evening we watched recorded highlights of the day's events and then the Jubilee beacon lighting ceremonies around the country and the Commonwealth interspersed with archive footage of the Queen's visits to the four nations of the U.K. Interesting to note the number of places going in for electrical or gas fired beacons rather than consuming wood. As a beacon is a signalling device using light, the means of producing light isn't bound by traditional custom, romantic though it may be.
Everything seems to have gone perfectly with nothing to mar the occasion, so many people old and young alike, expressing their appreciation, for the inspiring life of service Her Majesty has led. People share a sense of the uniqueness of this celebration in our national history, tinged as it is with sadness at the thought that the second Elizabethan era is gently coming to an end
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