On September 8th 2022, our beloved Queen Elizabeth II died after 70 years on the throne. I found myself crying from shock and sorrow that we no longer have her as the anchor of the ship of state. We enter a period of change. We have a new reign, King Charles III. We must say as those forefathers before us in centuries past said, “The Queen is dead, Long Live the King”. To witness history in the making I’ve journeyed twice to London to see the procession of her coffin travelling by gun carriage from Buckingham Palace down the Mall and across Horseguards Parade to Westminster Hall, and then again to file past her coffin Lying in State.
I look in my purse and see the Queen’s face on familiar notes and coins. A wave of nostalgia overtakes me to think that soon these may be phased out and we will have money with a King’s face on them. But it wasn’t always like this. Before decimalisation swept away old money, in the days when you needed loose change to board a bus and plastic cards were science fiction, money used to be a jingling weight in your pocket. There were occasional young Victoria bun pennies made of thin copper (coppers) that would turn up alongside thicker Victoria’s older widowed portrait, Edward VII and George V’s bearded faces and George VI still a relatively young man, and of course the lovely portrait of our own Queen Elizabeth II, her coins new and shiny.
History was alive and well and in
