It was a farewell steeped in glumly appropriate pathos. Grounded on a sandbank and limping from Southampton’s frenetic lanes, the QEII eventually left British waters on Wednesday, bound for the soupy warmth of the Gulf.
A shallow bath awaits the majesterial vessel, her bow and stern will be plundered, ripped apart and replaced with uber kitsch, she’ll be souped-up to Sheikhy viability and her plumbing system shall be better than anything ever produced in the British Isles. It’s a grandiose nod towards history and Arab-Anglo relations, but feels more like something rather more momentous.
The QEII’s resting place in Dubai, is, surely, a fitting metaphor of the current state of geo-financial global change. If the QEII stood for Empire (at the very most) or Great Britian (at the least), then imperial clout has now well and truly passed into the hands of the world’s wealthiest men, acquired through liquid gold. How better to symbolise the financial power shift of the past century?
It’s a strange and bubbly feeling to wake up to such profoundly important and uplifting news as that of Obama’s victory this morning. We’ve grown accustomed to the droning sighs of a financially crippled globe, the tuts of a disenfranchised electorate and the imperious cries of the environmentally ‘concerned’.
Is that happiness and opitimism I hear and sense on the news? Are they actually smiling? It also happens to be Bonfire night and my birthday – a triple whammy of excitement in my camp. It’s all just a little discombobulating.
At work, a reporter friend who has been up all night covering the unfolding elections from within London’s US Embassy gave me the disappointing lowdown: it was a long, dull night. No champagne was on offer and most people had left by 2am. And to keep the masses refreshed? The thoughtful folk down at Grosvenor Square laid on none other than MacDonald’s, Burger King, Starbucks and Subway stalls. All complimentary.
Change we may be celebrating, but much, let’s face it, stays the same.
notes from a newsroom 