The bars were depressingly full and bustling. Girls with tight calves and cleavage bulging from their ribbon dresses tottered along the pavement; boys in white trainers held them up by the arms. Pint glasses chinked in the night air and bouncers in hi-vis stood outside each pub, resolute, round, statuesque almost. It made us feel sad.
There were police vehicles of course in blue, white and yellow check - and barriers across the main entrance. There were cones too, and flashing lights. And there above it all, serene as the moon, was the uplit Round Tower of Windsor Castle.
We rumbled over the speed bumps. Behind, a police van bounced headlamps into our car, and ahead the streets of young people parted for us as we made our way in search of a parking space.
We found one eventually, by the river. It took some angling into, but we squeezed in. The river is a little way down from the hill on which the castle was built, so naturally it was also a bit quieter down there. That’s where we took this photo - right by the Diamond Jubilee Fountains. I really loved the way they were lit up with the castle behind them.
This poem (I posted it on instagram) is based on the picture. I really like the way a photograph catches a single moment, a still from a moving, noisy, world. You can’t tell the fountains are bubbling or that the moon rises slowly overhead. You can’t hear the distant sound of restaurants, and you can’t see the way grief and loss sits so heavily above it. It’s all frozen. It’s all still.
Still
So quiet in a photograph,
So motionless and still.
So lifeless seems the image
Of that castle on the hill
So frozen are the moments
Where the fountain waters gleam
So still is now the memory
Of our departed Queen
But we were there to see the dance
Of water, lamp and light
And see the tender moon above
The castle in the night
Where thankfulness and sorrow
Tumbled heartfelt on the hill
We look upon the photograph
And we shall hear it still
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