You may have seen Windsor Castle on TV last year when it was the setting to the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. How the paparazzi are going to town on the unravelling of the image of the Royal couple! Harry & Meg live in Frogmore Cottage in Windsor which is presently being renovated by the public purse for a mere ยฃ2.4m ๐.
We popped over to the Castle and visited the State Rooms which are still under renovation after the fire of 2000. It is a mix of grandeur, gaudiness and history. The Queen is usually in residence at the weekends when they raise the British flag.
We had a look around the Chapel (which is rather grand) and featured heavily in the televised wedding. We also watched the changing of the guards ๐๐ผโโ๏ธ which is quintessentially English pomp and ceremony with a brass band playing and soldiers marching around with guns, bayonets and swords โ๏ธ.
The Queen has a portfolio of castles and palaces and I visited her summer residence in Edinburgh some 20 years ago. I have yet to visit Buckingham Palace in London where she resides during the week in spite of living in London for a decade. Suffice to say that the opulence and wealth exhibited by the display of her residence together with the anachronistic pomp and ceremony made me feel unexpectedly very anti monarchist.
It would be fine as a museum and for the entertainment of the tourists who arrived in great numbers but when there are increasing numbers of homeless people, some who die because of the cold during the winter months, it is an obscene display of inequality and injustice, ๐ญ