I keep hearing people say that the coronation this weekend will be a once in a lifetime event, implying that we should all relish it. They seem to think that it is somehow on the same social level as the Olympics eleven years ago. The thing is, I don’t think it will be: of course, the last such coronation was seventy years ago, before most of us were born. The person being crowned was twenty-six, and had her entire life ahead of her. The difference now is our new king is well into his seventies: without wanting to sound too pessimistic, it won’t be that long before he snuffs it too. It will only be twenty years at most until we have to do all this again. That’s one of the reasons why I’m not very excited about it. More to the point, whereas the Olympics were a worldwide social and cultural phenomenon which London had spent seven years preparing for, and which gave the city and country a unique chance to show off to the entire world, the coronation is an overtly religious ceremony in which the church symbolically bestows power onto a totally unelected head of state. As much as I found the one intriguing, I find the other frankly repugnant.

Thus, while the London Olympics in 2012 were almost certainly a one-off given I don’t think we can expect London or any British city to be selected to host the games again any time soon, to say the coronation will be similarly unique and try to generate the same level of excitement around it is to forget that it won’t be long before we have to get all this Union Jack bunting back out. To call this weekend’s event once in a lifetime forgets that certain lifetimes don’t have that long to run. Frankly, it just feels like a lot of anticipation is being stirred up over very little. Coronations, it seems, are probably like London busses.