A waste of a wet weekend...

I have the order of service for the king’s coronation today. The great and the good will be ushered into Westminster Abbey: the Clerk of the Closet, the Groom of the Robes, the Lady Usher of the Black Rod, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, the Inspector of the Royal Foreskin, all presided over by the baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells. Other faiths will be represented – Jains, Buddhists, Sikh, Jews, Zoroastrians, Sunni Muslim, Shia Muslim and members of the Baháʼí Faith – though the coronation ceremony will be unremittingly Christian in nature. And not just Christian... but Protestant.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will address the kneeling King Charles. “Will you to the utmost of your power to maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England?” The king will reply: “All this I promise to do”, and will also declare that he is a “faithful Protestant”. God – the Protestant God – will be mentioned no fewer than eighty times before the great, the good and Prince Andrew file out of the Abbey, to enjoy a right royal knees-up and a pie ’n’ pea supper down at the Old Bull and Bush…