The Queen is Dead - God Save the King

I was going to give you plaster figures from India this afternoon, but events - as they say - had other ideas, so I think this is more appropriate, file under the nostalgia thread.

This is my Grandfather's baton; not any-old baton, not a sports-day baton, not a parade-ground baton, not an "I'm in charge of this ship today" baton, but the baton of an usher at the marriage of Princess Elizabeth Windsor and Philip Mountbatten (Nee Prince Phillip of Greece and Denmark) which took place on Thursday 20 November 1947 at Westminster Abbey in London.

I would imagine there were several hundred ushers, and I don't suppose any of them got to enter the Abbey or sit through the wedding service, as they were there to hold back crowds and direct people or traffic as a near day-long programme of 'Pomp & Circumstance' unfolded, giving new hope - and a reason for a knees-up - to a nation still struggling to shake-off the aftermath of total war.

The baton's really only a wooden dowel, painted, with a gilded-brass badge nailed to it, but it's not what it is, it's what it represents, it's the symbology of nationhood, of continuity, of the hopes of the age, of service, loyalty, pageant, and it's a reminder of the fact that history is also today.

And - on this saddest of days for our nation - also a reminder that nothing lasts forever, but that we are all the products of that history.