The Hive

We are a species with powerful ancestral urges to swarm and to emote together: to encourage, to intimidate, to worship, to celebrate, to weep, to roar, or just to party. And we crave and we conjure up figureheads, celebrities, top bananas and gurus, saviours and sentinels, gods and bogeymen.

And in the midst of our sprawling everyday hives we create awe-inspiring henges. Stadiums and shopping centres, auditoriums and cathedrals, arenas in which we spin and re-enact legends and dreams, rhymes and rituals.

One thing the British do like no other nation: this past week, they queued cheerfully for the queue for The Queue that was visible from space. Compelled to indulge in stoic discomforts and self-discipline, they sought the company of strangers to acknowledge and share a common vague emotional state.

Meantime, whilst the hive snivelled and queued or dismissed and declined, the ranks of the elders and the defenders and the keepers of the henges conjured up the ceremony and rituals that would create the climax required to revitalise our identity: ceremonial tradition, with generous undertones of Shakespeare and Alice in Wonderland. So, for a few days, there was the strangely reassuring sense that at last someone, somewhere, had taken spectacular control of this teetering and blunderous society. A dear, dotty, eccentric patchwork of squabbly tribes assembled to mourn the passing of seventy years of steady motherly grout, and to show the rest of the world that they’re still in business, even if only for the tourists.

And O, those pipes and drums, those kilts, those Welsh harps and pitch-perfect choirs, those ceremonial gladrags, those kilts, and all those proud mothers’ sons and daughters. And let’s not forget the patience of all the king’s horses, and let’s honour all the swans and eagles and black bears that contributed to the extreme millinery.

All around our lonesome blue planet, four billion pairs of beady eyes feasted upon every detail of our awe-inspiring and doubtless intimidating precision pantomime pageantry, seemingly immune to a micro-slip of disaster. And there would have been a multitude of tight shoes and excruciated knees and bloated bladders. The crowds lined the route to bear witness and salute the spectacle with their twenty- first century third eyes raised aloft. And gimlet-eyed lenses peered deep into the souls of the mourners, closely observing the grimaces of stiff upper lips as they surrendered to the visceral power of emotional heave and flow. So many flies on so many walls.

Because - mortality is a lonesome affair, not least because none of us really knows what on earth it’s all about whilst we are living it, let alone what comes afterwards, however mighty or beloved we may be when the clock stops, and the silence of the Goneness prevails.

And there, with impeccable choreography, ended another neat historical chapter - The Second Elizabethan Age, and with it a whole perspective - and for awhile, all was still, and all was well. But as the mournful wail of the lone piper fades away, can we cling to the essence of some of that purposeful togetherness and align our perspectives as we face the deeply daunting unknowns of our tomorrows? Time for a soft and beautifully choreographed revolution, perhaps.

Politics is a social activity in which assorted participants play, vying for power and advantage, hopefully observing established rules … a lot like chess or poker. Statesmen and soldiers, monarchs and priests, the occasional jester, and a few billion pawns.

Walruses and carpenters, cabbages and kings.

As Alice said, “Why, they’re only a pack of cards, after all.”