How the Queen Rained on My Parade

Like a lot of people you haven’t heard of, I had other plans for September 8. In fact, I was going to have a parade. For me.

Okay, it was going to be an imaginary parade, down the Main Street of my mind; such fetes  have many advantages: cheaper; much easier to clean up after the confetti-tossers and the horses; and it never rains.

The occasion and date kind of crept up on me, though I’d long been looking forward to the occasion, which was my reaching the status of being a half-millionaire.

Not, alas, a half-millionaire in dollars, or any other financial instrument. Rather, I was within sight of — wait for it — accumulating half a million hits on this blog.

Go ahead, chuckle if you want. Or even nod toward a site like the Drudge Report, which brags credibly about how it gets like 26 million hits every [g*dd*m] day.

I know, I know. This blog is, at best, a tiny cork bobbing on the great swirling swells of the internet ocean.

Yet I’ve pecked away at it for more than a decade (the start date is hazy), increasingly in recent years. People have read it, too. The occasional post reached over a thousand, a handful north of two. There have been lots of comments, only a few of which have descended into internet trollery.

The blog has delivered a number of Quaker scoops, upset a few applecarts, comforted a handful of the afflicted, got me canceled here and there, shown lots of pretty flowers, cute grandkids, cats, and reportedly even evoked some laughs.

Further, over time, the average daily hit numbers have slowly grown.

The web hosting service maintains a chart which shows hits in real time, and a running grand total. Some months back I noticed that the “all time” number was over 400,000.

That was when I decided on a parade at the half-million mark. In a time of pandemic and ebbing energy, it would show at least a certain stamina.

And two weeks ago, the countdown was at the wire, and Thursday around sundown I actually saw the tally flip over from 499,995 to 500,005 (bother that they didn’t pause right on the 500K button for a screen shot, but that’s algorithms for you, a rum lot.)

But, what the hey — now was the time to pull the cord on the parade, and I knew just how it should look . . .

. . . But on the way to setting it up, my blogger’s reflex kicked in long enough to check on any late-breaking headlines —and there it was, the news equivalent of a sudden earthquake or a two-week severe thunderstorm —

And I knew it was all over for my puny plans. The next days, or weeks would be shot for anything else but clop, clop, clop, “thru Jesus Christ our Lord,” 73 years, fifteen prime ministers, poor Diana and how many times was Harry snubbed this morning?

Whatever. Despite my firmly (small r) republican outlook, the seemingly endless foofaraw had a certain stolid appeal. And there was a tad of consolation in pointing out that the new king was named after me.

Besides, I now know that even if Her Late Majesty had muddled through for a few more weeks, there was no real hope for my parade, because September 8 was also the day of this other, long-feverishly awaited news photo, that of a certain three-shirted insurrectionist, insufferable in his defiant air of pardoned impunity, actually doing the perp walk adorned with the federal bracelets. . . .

“I say, half a million? Jolly good, old chap. Oh — there’s Camilla, er, the Queen. Must toddle . . .”

(Can’t deny it: I would have skipped my own parade to watch that )

 

One thought on “How the Queen Rained on My Parade”

  1. Well, we must as Quakers, pray for him to wisely follow his leadings and promptings. Btw, Camilla is the Queen Consort – not Queen. I doubt if she’ll be given much to do. And the there’s Andrew and his disgraceful past? Let’s skip him and go straight to his son… who might reign as long as the dedicated Lilibet did.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.