gilded arches and roof bosses. To prevent this happening people keep weighing her down with cloaks and robes, orbs and sceptres, until she’s so heavy that bishops and archbishops have to help propel her around. She reminds me of the wind-up Chinese doll that Uncle Ted has brought Patricia back from Hong Kong – both glide over the carpet without revealing their feet and wear an expression of grave serenity. The difference between them is that the wind-up doll doesn’t have any feet, just little castors, while we must suppose the brand-new Queen’s feet really are her means of locomotion across the deep, crimson pile of the carpet. The colour of the Coronation carpet is also a supposition, of course, as the Coronation is taking place, in miniature, in various shades of grey on the little Ferguson set in the corner of the living-room Above the Shop.
The television set is George’s gift to Bunty, a consolation for having to bring up her family Above the Shop instead of a normal home. We cannot claim to have the first television set in the street, that honour must go to Miss Portello of Hapland, the children’s clothes shop. But we are the runners-up and, more importantly, the winners in the family, for noone on either George or Bunty’s side of the family have yet acquired this most desirable of objects.
Bunty is torn two ways – she is naturally proud of the television set and must show it off, and what better occasion than a coronation? At the same time she can’t stand having all these people in the house. The sandwiches! The pots of tea! Will it ever stop? She is buttering scones in the kitchen, heaping up a great pile of them like cobblestones. She’s been saving her butter ration for weeks for the Coronation baking, storing it in the fridge, along with what she’s managed to prise out of her mother, Nell, and her sister-in-law Auntie Gladys. She has baked an exotic array of goods, for ‘The good cook knows that nothing will repay her skill so well as attractive cakes, whether nut brown from the oven or daintily decorated,’ – this according to Bunty’s Bible, Perfect Cooking , the ‘Parkinson Gas Stove Cook Book’.
As well as the scones, she has also produced plates of ham sandwiches (ham courtesy of Walter, the philandering butcher), ‘Coconut Madeleines’, ‘Lamingtons’ and ‘Little Caramel Pastries’ ( Very Special! ), not to mention ‘Piccaninnies’ ( from Australia ) and ‘Dago Cakes’ – these last two presumably in honour of all our little Commonwealth friends. They all have the slightly rancid aftertaste of butter that has been stored for too long in Bunty’s brand new Frigidaire ( Nothing smaller is big enough! ), another consolation prize from George. She has also made sausage rolls and Auntie Gladys has brought an enormous pork-pie and Auntie Babs has brought two fruit flans – big cartwheels, one of overlapping tinned peaches and maraschino cherries, the other of tinned Bartlett pears and grapes. These arouse much excitement and envy. Bunty thinks her sister hasn’t got enough to do if she can spend time making such perfect, flawless circles. She should try having as many children as Bunty has, Bunty thinks, adding one last scone to the pile. Bunty has so many children she doesn’t know what to do.
‘It’s like the Black Hole of Calcutta up there,’ she says to George as he passes through the kitchen, looking for more brown ale. ‘And there are too many children,’ she adds, as if there were a quota for such events.
There are rather a lot of us. I’m one of them, weaving myself in and out of grown-up legs like a dog at an agility trial. Here there and everywhere, I don’t know how I move so fast – one moment I’m standing by the television set, the next I’m hurtling through the passage to the kitchen. If you blinked you’d almost think there were two of me. Perhaps I’m on castors like the Chinese doll – but then I’m very advanced for my age. People are
The television set is George’s gift to Bunty, a consolation for having to bring up her family Above the Shop instead of a normal home. We cannot claim to have the first television set in the street, that honour must go to Miss Portello of Hapland, the children’s clothes shop. But we are the runners-up and, more importantly, the winners in the family, for noone on either George or Bunty’s side of the family have yet acquired this most desirable of objects.
Bunty is torn two ways – she is naturally proud of the television set and must show it off, and what better occasion than a coronation? At the same time she can’t stand having all these people in the house. The sandwiches! The pots of tea! Will it ever stop? She is buttering scones in the kitchen, heaping up a great pile of them like cobblestones. She’s been saving her butter ration for weeks for the Coronation baking, storing it in the fridge, along with what she’s managed to prise out of her mother, Nell, and her sister-in-law Auntie Gladys. She has baked an exotic array of goods, for ‘The good cook knows that nothing will repay her skill so well as attractive cakes, whether nut brown from the oven or daintily decorated,’ – this according to Bunty’s Bible, Perfect Cooking , the ‘Parkinson Gas Stove Cook Book’.
As well as the scones, she has also produced plates of ham sandwiches (ham courtesy of Walter, the philandering butcher), ‘Coconut Madeleines’, ‘Lamingtons’ and ‘Little Caramel Pastries’ ( Very Special! ), not to mention ‘Piccaninnies’ ( from Australia ) and ‘Dago Cakes’ – these last two presumably in honour of all our little Commonwealth friends. They all have the slightly rancid aftertaste of butter that has been stored for too long in Bunty’s brand new Frigidaire ( Nothing smaller is big enough! ), another consolation prize from George. She has also made sausage rolls and Auntie Gladys has brought an enormous pork-pie and Auntie Babs has brought two fruit flans – big cartwheels, one of overlapping tinned peaches and maraschino cherries, the other of tinned Bartlett pears and grapes. These arouse much excitement and envy. Bunty thinks her sister hasn’t got enough to do if she can spend time making such perfect, flawless circles. She should try having as many children as Bunty has, Bunty thinks, adding one last scone to the pile. Bunty has so many children she doesn’t know what to do.
‘It’s like the Black Hole of Calcutta up there,’ she says to George as he passes through the kitchen, looking for more brown ale. ‘And there are too many children,’ she adds, as if there were a quota for such events.
There are rather a lot of us. I’m one of them, weaving myself in and out of grown-up legs like a dog at an agility trial. Here there and everywhere, I don’t know how I move so fast – one moment I’m standing by the television set, the next I’m hurtling through the passage to the kitchen. If you blinked you’d almost think there were two of me. Perhaps I’m on castors like the Chinese doll – but then I’m very advanced for my age. People are
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