The monarchy pantomime

Down on the Embankment in London, yesterday, we came upon a peculiar sight: a completely stationary parade. Floppy-hatted drummers, with a vaguely heraldic look, marched on the spot in columns. Behind them there were equestrian forms, mid-leap, with their lower halves made to look like marble statues and their upper bodies made of clockwork, trailing a huge horse’s head drawing behind it a purple crown the size of a gasometer. Behind them, phalanxes of teenagers dressed as swans, and behind them phalanxes of teenagers dressed as some sort of fish, twirled and flapped to the famous patriotic song ‘Who Let The Dogs Out?’. Someone had let the dogs out, an’ all: another team of T-shirted youngsters were ‘walking’ a Battersea’s-worth of life-sized model corgis on sticks around them.

Behind them, there were gaily-painted cyclists on top, for some reason, of Land Rover Defenders. Behind them in turn was a great open-topped lorry painted all sorts of colours atop which people painted in the same sorts of colours were breakdancing and – good god – bouncing on a trampoline.