Death of the King -

 

       

                                 King George VI

I put this up last year but I noticed some hits today so copied and pasted – after a quick brush up - with the royal family in the news.

Here we have a little story set in 1952 – and it's true! A little eight year old boy with the name of Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan was sitting in class at school. Christopher was his Christian name, being a Christian but not the kind of Christian as the school he was attending - and as he was from an Irish immigrant family he was a Catholic – was being the operative word these days in any case.

Thomas was the second name on the birth certificate and Joseph the name on the Baptism certificate. Owen came later, when he was confirmed, and when the teacher asked for full names, in the senior school, he gave him all the names, and was known as that to that teacher forever; especially when he pulled the little side burns of the little boy and said 'so what's your answer to that, Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan? Something witty? Something Irish?'

But enough of that let's go back to 1952.

February 6^th 1952 little Christopher was sitting in class wanting a wee wee; the teacher on this occasion said it was OK for him to go and off he went.

On that same day, Raymond Simmonds was playing the wag from school; playing the wag being the vernacular for playing truant, although playing truant is usually knocking time off from school without your parents' permission. In Raymond's case I think his mother kept him from school that day.

So when I came out of the boys' lavatory – me being Christopher Thomas Joseph Owen Sullivan - there was Raymond Simmonds sitting on the school steps.

On that day, the first thing Raymond Simmonds said to me was 'The King is dead.'

We knew, even at my tender age of eight, that the king had been ill and in fact he had died in his sleep that morning.

There are two things I remember about the King: one was that he had the same birthday as me – December fourteenth – and the other was that I thought he looked like Gary Cooper.

So now (or then) I knew what the teacher didn't know, nor the rest of the class or any of the other teachers.

It may have been the only time in my life when I was the smartest guy in the room?

If I went in to class and said something I would be asked how I knew and that would get Raymond Simmonds into trouble as I would have to tell - so I kept it to myself for a while.

Sitting in front of me was Gillian Balmond and next to her was Winifred Bryant; even at that age I was deeply in love with both of them. They would turn around to chat and I would flirt in my little baby ways and eventually, that day, I had to tell one of them about the King.

I can't remember which one I told but when I did, she told the other and the other answered back 'Now Princess Elizabeth will be Queen.'

We went home for lunch and of course it was all true.

There were no cell phones in those days, no Internet and no social media.

Everything seemed safe and at eight I would walk home by myself, with maybe other kids, and maybe a half mile walk and sometimes even raining - or in the snow.

Mothers were at home to feed and love us and the 50s never seemed dismal to me or in black and white.

It's great me being able to publish this on the Internet and the 210,633 (so far) hits from people who read it but look what it has done and the number of zombies it has produced – millennials don't even know how to use a can opener.

On that day mothers outside the school told their children the bad news; the King is dead. Some kids would cry; some of those kids wouldn't even know who the King was as they were too young but the grown ups certainly did.

The King's wife, Queen Elizabeth, who then became The Queen Mother, vernacular for the Queen's Mother, always, till the end of her long life, blamed the late King's brother David (Edward VIII) who abdicated because of his involvement with Mrs Simpson. She blamed him for the death of her husband. She never wanted to be the Queen to Bertie's king (his real name being Albert) - as she wasn't Queen as the current Elizabeth is. She never wanted that as they were happy as they were bringing up their two little girls to live, perhaps, as Princess Anne does now with her husband and children not even taking titles and living relatively normal lives.

A lot of people said Mrs Simpson did a great service to Britain by taking such a dangerous and naïve man out of the running.

The public liked him even though he abandoned Britain during the war, leaving his younger brother and his wife, The King and Queen, in Britain. 

During some of the war, David (Edward VIII) lived in America and whilst Churchill was trying to persuade Roosevelt to enter America into the war David, who sympathised with the Nazis together with the air pioneer Charles Lindbergh, tried to get America on the German side; now if you don't believe this look it up.

In fact at one point Lindbergh was considering running for President – if you think Trump is bad just ponder on that for a moment.

[I did have a photo here of Edward VIII with Charles Lindberg last time, but didn't bother this time.]

Times changed a couple of years after the King died. James Dean became the first American teenager and when the draft finished – the call up – it produced plays like Look Back in Anger, music like the blues and Rock'n'Roll and, eventually, The Beatles.

I loved the influx of Jamaicans into our neighbourhood with their great double breasted suits – I remember light blue suits – with their casual walks and great music and their laughter. Even today they are still laughing even though they were treated terribly for many years and with the Windrush scandal some who have been here ever since found they couldn't get passports to get back in to the country after visiting their homeland.