a new era

I have no pho­to for today, because I don’t want to appear polit­i­cal and post either Tony or Gor­don! But it is quite a day here, we have a new Prime Min­is­ter, Gor­don Brown. A solemn accep­tance speech out­side Num­ber 10 Down­ing Street (did you know that even if the Prime Min­is­ter has been accept­ed by his par­ty he still has to be invit­ed by the Queen? Well, she did). And a very intel­li­gent, I thought, and enter­tain­ing, good­bye by Tony Blair. Say what any­one might about deci­sions tak­en: he is a well-spo­ken per­son and a love­ly fam­i­ly man, and it seems a bit sad to have his depar­ture take this note. But it did, a bit under­stat­ed, I thought. Ordi­nary removal men com­ing to pick up his bits and pieces, to take to the house in a near­by square that we drove past tonight on the way back from skat­ing: “oh, there’s his house.”

At the same time I was think­ing of the 1990-ish (we were head­strong new­ly­weds, not pay­ing enough atten­tion to pol­i­tics), was it, depar­ture of Mar­garet Thatch­er that we wit­nessed our first time around in Lon­don: “It’s been a fun­ny old life.”

And of course this week­end we’re hon­our­ing the tenth anniver­sary of the death of Princess Diana. I remem­ber so clear­ly wak­ing up that morn­ing in August 1997 with lit­tle Baby Avery, to the hor­ri­ble news of Diana’s death. All the clich­es about a moth­er leav­ing her chil­dren, ter­ri­bly real, me clutch­ing a tiny baby in New York.

It’s odd, not being either British or Amer­i­can on a day like this. You know you’re watch­ing part of his­to­ry, and part of me feels that some­one is being unfair­ly judged today for hav­ing fol­lowed some­one else doing what he thought was right, and that an entire career and life is being put in only one prism. But of course we’ll see in future what it all means. Much rich­er, and more per­son­al, are things like watch­ing our daugh­ter at her rain-soaked horse show on Sun­day, with Becky and me sell­ing our hard-baked brown­ies and cook­ies and such for the ben­e­fit of the next far­ri­er’s vis­it to the sta­ble, and a lunch with a friend Lebanese-born and British-raised, not sure where her alle­giances lie, and plan­ning a Sun­day din­ner with school friends who mean so much to us that we did­n’t know exist­ed a year and a half ago. It’s a sen­ti­men­tal evening.