WINDSOR AT CHRISTMAS

Back to Windsor today. It’s different to the last time. The Queen, like the summer we last saw her in, has gone. Winter has coated the castle in snow, just an icing on the battlements, the green grass and the cannons, but enough to show which season it is.

There’s something about the castle at Christmas. They decorate the ornate rooms with huge, sparkling Christmas trees and garlands and wreaths. Underneath the trees, between the seventeenth-century sofas and gilded pianos, are boxes of presents, wrapped neatly in Victorian paper and ribbons. It’s just the right amount of poshness and old-fashion to make it charming.

It’s strange though, how different it all feels without Her Majesty. Sammy pointed out how she feels the same - as though our connection to the monarchy has been somehow diminished and what we have left is doing its best, but won’t ever be what it was. That’s not the King’s fault. It just takes time to get used to the new, when you were so familiar with the old.

This week we also watched Harry and Meghan’s six-hour Netflix documentary about their long journey out of the Royal Family. That is one complex situation isn’t it? In a way, none of us are qualified to comment, and yet all of us seem to have the need to. There were two things that stood out. One, hurt people hurt people, and two, if the queues to get into Windsor this morning are any measure of anything, the monarchy will survive just fine, regardless of what the beetroot-faced newspaper men might furiously tell us.

It was nice to see the soldiers in their long winter coats. They marched past imperiously, arms swinging, rifles and bayonets high. You don’t ever want to get in the way of those people.

And the castle, there for a thousand years, uninvaded, impenetrable on its steep bank over Windsor and Eton, glistened in the winter sun. Behind it, the layered sky of foggy banks and wispy clouds, soft-stroked like an impressionist painting in grey, gold and silver. It was so different to last time. So much seems to have changed. And yet beneath the frozen snow and icy patches, it really hasn’t. I think that’s a good thing.