There was still a little bunting down our street as we came back home after six days, away, the windswept and bedraggled remnants of a celebration that had largely passed us by. As I’ve said before, I’d rather be a citizen than a subject.
We’d been staying in a moderately remote Devon valley with a group of friends where we had no mobile signal without climbing further up the hill, and not a single union jack was visible. Of course when one of our party made the mistake of turning on the TV, that was all that was on apart from tennis, but I didn’t have to stay and watch it.
I’m not anti-Jubilee. I think it would be a very good thing if we followed the model set down in Leviticus and every 49 (or 50) years returned the land to God, rather than our current ridiculous system of land ownership which entrenches inequality and class differences. Bring it on, let’s have a real Jubilee!
Distant Jubilee bonfire and car headlights, 3s exposure without a tripod…
But although in the valley where we were staying there was little actual sight of the recent event – we did glimpse a bonfire on a distant hill-top and we did actually leave the site and make our way to various villages, towns and the city of Exeter, where it was sometimes impossible to avoid the signs of the times.
I spent some time waiting for friends on an Exeter Street on a bench I was informed was a favourite haunt of the city’s drug dealers and I photographed the shop more or less opposite, one of many thousands around the country decorated for the Jubilee.
Later that day I walked past the Nobody Inn bus stop, and although there was nobody in (and no buses for four days) it had been decorated for the celebrations, along with a nearby tree.
The following day we visited Topsham, the former port of Exeter and although we had missed the main festivities there, the bunting was still up and there were clearly other celebrations taking place.
On the Salutation Inn there was an enviably catholic selection of flags, including I think an old sun-free Argentine flag which owes its origin to General Belgrano, the Red Banner of the former Soviet Union and a Dutch flag sharing place of honour with the Union Flag and St George’s Cross. It was also good to see yellow and green adding variety to the bunting alongside the red white and blue. Topsham does of course have strong historical links with the Dutch, with many of the bricks in its Dutch style houses having come across as ballast from Holland.
And on the bowling green they were having a Jubilee event.