I’m not feeling it

And I know that I’m not the only person in the country who is not really feeling like the calypsonian Young Tiger was feeling when he sang about how elated he was as “a young creole” to be there at the coronation in 1953. And even though he could not follow the procession at least he was there at the coronation.

Even now, 70 years later, Young Tiger’s calypso resonates. Most people would have forgotten what the weather was like (inclement) on that day in 1953 when THE Queen was crowned if it wasn’t for that historic testament on 78 rpm acetate that lives on.

On reflection, that coronation was OUR coronation. Like it or not, she was OUR Queen. Just as her first son and successor will be regarded, like it or not, as YOUR King. I just haven’t found it in me to regard him as ‘a fi we king’, if you know what I mean.

That might all change of course. If Meghan shows up, she gives the coronation the Black seal of approval. That is what this king so dearly needs. The last thing he wants is for her absence to overshadow his big day and for those of us of African/ Caribbean heritage to go about our business on the day in May because we’re not really feeling it without our Black princess being there.

Having said that, the great Brit- ish composer Shirley Thompson, pictured below, has been asked by HRH to write the musical soundtrack for his crowning.

The moment she tweeted that the other day I thought, well, at least like his mother (with Young Tiger’s ‘At The Coronation’) Charles will have a musical legacy that will live long after him. Prof Shirley Thompson does not get the credit of being a national treasure. Not just one of our finest composers — Black or white (although it is important to recognise that she is the foremost of our composers to be recognised in the castles and palaces of the British monarchy since Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast). And, who knows, King Charles (there, I said it, I somehow forced it out) may yet commission her to write a new national anthem so that we can dispatch with the dirge that is God Save The Queen (there, I said it) because I’m not feeling this God Save The King business that they are trying to get me to sing.

And that’s not just me, the Scots feel that way as well, given that line in the national anthem that we no longer sing which went:

Lord grant that Marshal Wade

May by thy mighty aid

Victory bring

May he sedition hush

And like a torrent rush

Rebellious Scots to crush

God Save the King

So, it extremely irresponsible of the Prime Minister to declare that we shouldn’t sanitise the prejudice of Roald Dahl in our children’s books because they are sacred, when this institution that we call the British state realised that they cannot be insulting the Scots in our national anthem and took the decision to censor that passage.

Genius

Anyway, it remains to be seen whether this PM will last longer than Shirley Thompson’s coronation composition. Remember, a lettuce lasted longer than Rishi Sunak’s predecessor.

Yeah, King Charles, make Shirley Thompson a dame and get her to re-write our national anthem without the inglorious legacies the current anthem bears. She would, through her musical genius, put a context to modern Britain that would make us all feel part of the knees-up at Westminster Abbey.

And if Meghan is there and all, well that would be the jewel in the coronation crown without the Koh-i-Noor.