When I turned the news on this morning, they were of course talking about the upcoming coronation. Let’s face it: that’s pretty much all we’re going to hear about over the next few days. To be honest, though, I can’t really say I’m all that fussed. Like many people it would seem, I’m starting to think it’s time to get rid of all this monarchic bollocks. The queen was a nice, inoffensive maternal figure. We accepted and respected her; for most of us she had simply always been there. Charles, however, seems to think he’ll somehow automatically inherit that respect, despite all the bollocks he and his family has put us through in the last forty years or so. To be honest, that seems rather arrogant to me. It thus does not surprise me at all that so many people seem to be having second thoughts about the monarchy.

Of course I’ll keep an eye on what happens next week, but that’s about it. It’s supposedly going to be one of these huge national mega-events, along the lines of the queen’s jubilees or the Olympic ceremonies, but I really can’t see that happening. As I noted here, for the last two or three decades the man we’re now supposed to refer to as our king has been a central character in a national royal soap opera which intensely irritated most of us. While the queen seemed to stay above all the nauseating drivel the press treated us to about who was in a relationship with who, Charles was at the centre of it. He therefore already has a hell of a lot of baggage associated with him. If he thinks he can now suddenly shed all that, and that we’ll all now dutifully accept him like we accepted his mum, he is gravely mistaken.