I was around five years of age.

I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my cousin, Flora. In my memory Flora seems slightly younger than I, but given that for years I delighted in being the youngest in the extended family (I recall my annoyance, in my teens, after my bachelor uncle went to Germany and, against all expectation, came back married and the fruit of his loins soon lost me this distinction) this must be incorrect. Anyway, we were deemed by the grown-ups to be of an age to play together.

Although Flora’s family lived in Cambridge too, only a mile away, I don’t believe we met often – unlike my school friends who were around all the time. So we were sort of getting to know each other, I suppose.

To our delight, we discovered we had the same grandmother; although I called her Granny and Flora, Nan.

This pleasant coincidence, however, was soon trumped by another, far more striking. Young as we were, a double-coincidence seemed much more statistically remarkable than a single one alone.

Not only the same grandmother, but the same Queen! How extraordinary was that? 

I told my mother at bedtime of this remarkable fluke. My mother was courtesy itself, so she didn’t laugh at me…

And Flora and I still have the same Queen. 

For some reason that I haven’t entirely put my finger on, all the glorious celebrations we’ve had over the last few days – rejoicing that we do, as so many of us have been – has brought back all the happiness of that time when I played with my friends on my bedroom floor, utterly secure in the certainties of life.

The unending love. The unquestioning support. The scrupulous honesty. The self-sacrifice to duty. The keeping of vows for life.

Not our political class, alas… But our monarch.

And my parents.

My mother and father were a few years older the the Queen, but very much of the same generation. Like her, they were utterly dependable, they poured their lives out for others and they never thought to wake up in the morning and not work that day.

This blog is dedicated to them… and to all the joy and resilience which they gifted me and mine as their legacy. 

When my mother died, my father chose, for her funeral, a reading from Song of Songs.

Love is strong as death.

It sums up their relationship to each other.

Perhaps even more, their Christian faith…