From The Mind of Merc - Sapphire Jubilee

Sometimes I find my mind wandering over various eclectic topics and occasionally I am inspired to write some of them down. Today I was thinking about the sapphire jubilee.

2017 marks the 65^th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and is consequently her Sapphire Jubilee. Yet despite all her previous jubilees there has been no celebration or seemingly even acknowledgement of this fact.

True there has never been another monarch who celebrated their sapphire jubilee – Victoria reached her diamond but fell 1 year and 5 months short of the sapphire and George III missed out on his diamond by 1 year and 9 months. True also that at the start of this year the queen was plagued with ill health so perhaps the more superstitious amongst her entourage may have not wanted to rock the boat. True finally that there are still 2 months left of this year but, as her accession was February and her coronation June and both these months have passed, the lack of any festivity seems strange.

I have watched as each month passed with no celebration, no fete to commemorate this historic event. I think it is incredible for a king or queen to live this long and I am at a loss to understand why it seems to have been overlooked. I can only hope that (unlike her previous jubilees) the plan for some reason is to celebrate it in the 65^th year of her actual coronation (it’s not as if only jubilees for years ending in a 0 are the only ones celebrated – for example, Queen Elizabeth’s 25^th or silver jubilee in 1977)

Yet this seems strange both for the reasons mentioned above and because Victoria’s subjects (or perhaps her ministers) were so eager to celebrate their queen’s longevity that they brought forward the idea of a diamond jubilee (which is technically the 65^th year) to mark Victoria’s 60^th – an action that was mirrored in 2012 for Queen Elizabeth. (Maybe that’s it – this is technically her proper Diamond Jubilee – which has already been celebrated and so hasn’t been marked this year) But why would the Brits want to pass up an excuse for a party?

Even if this milestone was to go unmarked there was also the fact that this year is the 70th or Platinum Wedding Anniversary of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip but, yet again, this appears to have gone by unremarked and unhailed.

I am not an out-and-out royalist but I still think for a monarch to reign for 65 years should be commemorated somehow.

Anyone else with me?