"God Save the Queen"

For the second time this year, I have been startled into awareness that I have acquired a queen along with a husband and all the accoutrements of farm life in the land beyond the highlands of Scotland. It sneaked up on me today in church where the congregation flowed into "God Save the Queen" after the last hymn of the service. It had been a special service because the Lord Leftanant (the Queen's local representative) gave an award to a cadet of the corps of young people preparing for possible military careers. After the award ceremony, the organist struck up the tune, and before I knew what had hit me, I was singing along--with some notable gaps in my knowledge of the words.

"I sang 'God Save the Queen' today for the first time," I tell my husband when I get home. It makes less of an impression than "the Lord Leftanant sends her regards." He knows the Lord Leftenant; he doesn't know the queen.

After the service, the LL stood on an improvised reviewing platform outside the church as the handful of cadets marched past with the junior pipe band in front. I love the pipes and I was proud of the young people. The hoopla enlivened the street (see above) on a grey, mizzly day, but it reminded me all too painfully that these young people in a few years' time will be in Lebanon or Iraq or Afghanistan. I struggle more to reconcile my support for them with my distrust of the political decisions that put them in harm's way than with having a queen. After all, I know them; I don't know the queen.