We got the news Wednesday, and everyone wanted to talk about it. Or at least mention it. And it was cold and raining again. Christine stopped her gopher at the door and yelled ‘Did you hear?’, and I said I had. She mimicked herself crying and then zoomed on toward the bakery.
Alan had a dilemma with the bakeries: he wanted a pasty and a piece of pavlova and didn’t know which bakery to go to.
‘I don’t want any bakery to see me go into the other bakery.’
‘The Queen has died.’ I said, a bit unnecessarily.
‘Oh God, Sarah will be in a shit now.’
‘She’s bearing up well.’
‘No she won’t. Well I’m going for my pastie. Need a feed.’
But Sarah did bear up well. The Queen had died on her birthday, but she’d already stopped by to tell me that, and to pick up a Sir Alec Guinness biography. She added that the Queen dying on her birthday was an omen of some kind. Robert was here too, disappointed because his order, The Lost Book of Enki, still hadn’t arrived.
He and Sarah stood back to discuss things.
A customer asked me for Mukiwa by Peter Godwin. I didn’t have it. Sarah told Robert that she didn’t hold with that women, Camilla.
Robert said that his family, the Grimshaws, extend directly back to King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and that one day there would be a reckoning for his execution, which never should have happened.
Sarah looked enthralled.
A couple bought a stack of Ben Elton books.
Liz came in for A Fortunate Life and said, ‘Isn’t it awful about the Queen.’
Sarah said that she didn’t think that Charles was in good health.
Robert said he threw the oracle last night and the cards said that Charles would soon succumb to gout, which got all of them in the end.
Anne came in for her cookbook and for tickets to St Andrews on Sunday. A lady came in and bought The Handmaid’s Tale for her sister in hospital. They said that it was sad about the Queen.
Then Robert had to go and reckon with the bank, who were deliberately trying to erase him from their system.
Sarah went to Woolworths.
Still raining.
Painting by Karin Jurick
The Book Keeper Book Shop 
Gout seems oddly specific…guess we shall see.
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I would have preferred people in my circle to be as laid-back. They all took it too seriously. She was 96!
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What an interesting blog! Tell Robert he might find The Tyrannicide Brief, by Geoffrey Robertson, interesting. It’s about John Cook, the lawyer who wrote the brief that resulted in Charles I’s trial. While I don’t agree with chopping people’s heads off, under any circumstances, Cook himself was later convicted of regicide and was hung, drawn and quartered, which is arguably a much worse fate than beheading.
The brief’s success is generally considered to be the precedent for trials of tyrants such as Pinochet so Cook, in my view, didn’t die in vain.
Isn’t history just wonderful?
Loved the bit about the gout.
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If I were in hospital, perhaps I’d be reading something a bit more cheerful than the Handmaid ~ but that’s just me!
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I certainly hope King Charles doesn’t soon succumb to gout! A sad day, but not unexpected at 96.
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