Saturday 9th May 2020

The Queen said that the streets are filled with love, although empty. The other day not only was this true but She was there.

It was when Angus Willis brought up the fishes from Hastings. I think that was the week after Easter. But it might have been the week after the week after Easter. Days do just keep their ghost of being what they were, Monday the sense of being at the bottom of the hill again, Wednesday midway etc. But the weeks are as they always were – hard to tell apart.

We assembled outside the Warehouse apartment of Angus Willis and Fergus Strachan, the one that’s been in all the magazines. Merle arrived from either an international Zoom meeting or her allotment after gruelling toil. Horror ensued because we had negronis – in their glasses and from their jug. Later something even worse happened. I hardly dare to say what. It was because we had more than one negroni. I can still see the figure staggering towards the open door of the building. It was like a scene from Chernobyl, the TV drama series.

Praise be! Massive thanks. We didn’t get it. It was over two weeks ago, I’m sure.

Angus arranged classic school stools for us to sit in in the road, 2 metres apart. Quite firmly in the road. Any Uber had to wait while we moved but I don’t think there were any. The stools were tubular steel painted and chipped, with plywood seats, big statements of the vintage, industrial, or in this case, school look Angus created and has become international.

So there we were, styled and chatting, not really thinking at that stage, as we would now, of how those metal tubes of the stools could be carrying virus, when who should come by on the other side of the street but Marmion Beaufleasance, one of Her Majesty’s Attendants of State, a Proclaimer and Keeper of Lineages. So extraorder… he was taking an evening constitutional – but Shoreditch is not the usual backdrop for the Royal Household and that he should have happened upon the buried side-street where the Warehouse apartment is. And we should have happened to be there. Perhaps it’s what occurs if you are a genealogist. But I think more it was a Gift of Love from God to guide us through the Pandemic. We had megaphone conversation for quite some time from one side of the street to the other. ‘Have you heard from the Queen?’ I go eventually. ‘Oh yes,’ he says, ‘only yesterday. She confirmed the cancelling of the Garter Service.’

Too awful – the cancelling. But she was there as she said she would be.