AFP – From rollerskating queens to red, white and blue wheelie bins, it’s hard to find anything in Britain this week that doesn’t have a jubilee theme.
SHOWBIZ ROYALTY:
Head to the village of Wellington in Herefordshire in western England, and you’ll find 104 scarecrows dressed up as queens, kings, princes and princesses by local residents as part of a competition.
“We’ve probably got a dozen or so queens dotted around… and a few Purple Rain Princes,” said co-organiser Phil Smith.
Princess Fiona from Shrek, Queen singer Freddie Mercury and Princess Leia from Star Wars also feature.
DANCE FEVER
“Dig that crazy rhythm,” Prince Charles once said as he tried his hand at scratch DJing in 2001. Now 73, he is no longer down with the kids.
He danced a tango with an alpaca farmer during a surprise appearance at a jubilee tea dance for older people near his Highgrove estate.
“It was wonderful,” said Bridget Tibbs. “He was very lovely to dance with, a lovely sense of rhythm, a nice hold. It was a pleasure.”
ART IMITATES LIFE
The queen made a surprise cameo with James Bond actor Daniel Craig at the opening of the 2012 London Olympics. Charles and his wife Camilla have had to make do with EastEnders.
The couple star in yesterday’s jubilee edition of the long-running BBC soap opera, which largely revolves around family strife, scandal and sibling rivalries.
CORGI-MANIA
The popularity of corgis – the queen’s favourite canine breed – is at a 30-year high, according to The Kennel Club (TKC), which tracks doggy demand.
Some 1,223 of the short-legged, waddling Pembroke Welsh Corgis were registered in 2021, said TKC spokesman Bill Lambert.
Royal social media channels have even unveiled a cute, crown-wearing corgi emoji, named PJ.
CLEAN FOR THE QUEEN
Still on the theme of dogs, one waste management company has even brought out corgi-branded dog poo bins. Divert.co.uk has also unveiled distinctive wheelie bins in the red, white and blue colours of the union flag.
“Even bins deserve to celebrate a remarkable monarch,” said company spokesman Mark Hall.
TEA AND CAKE
Lara Mason didn’t just bake a cake for the jubilee, she confected a life-sized cake of Her Majesty, with 400 eggs, 20 kilogrammes of flour and 20 kilogrammes of butter. Slices of the cake were served to bingo players in Birmingham with a cup of tea. Naturally.
TOPPER THAT
Not to be outdone, the Holmes Chapel Community Yarn Bombers in Cheshire, northwest England, knitted a life-sized queen and a corgi.
“She has been in my dining room in various stages of dress,” said Anita Armitt, 66, who set up the knitting group with a friend. “The first night she was out I felt like I had to go down and say goodnight to her because I’d got into the routine of doing it!”
The village is also decorated with knitted bunting, soldiers and “topper” crowns on post boxes.
ROYAL LEGO
More models, this time at Legoland Windsor, where a miniature display of the royal family has been fashioned from more than 18,000 individual bricks.
The plastic tribute includes a version of the Buckingham Palace balcony and took about 282 hours to put together.
‘BIG LIZZIE’
As tributes go, getting more than 300 Royal Navy sailors to spell out the royal cypher “E II R 70” on a 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier is hard to beat. It was staged on the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth II, which is affectionately known by its crew as “Big Lizzie”.
