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Monarch in 800-year old ritual hands out Maundy coins – and looks ahead to nuptials of William and Kate
It was hard to avoid the suspicion that the Queen's attendance on her 85th birthday on Thursday at the annual Maundy service, held at Westminster Abbey this year, was a dress rehearsal for Another Event in the same place in a week's time.
The Queen would not have seen it that way, of course: the service in which she presents coins to worthy devout elderly folk on the Thursday before Easter is an important part of her rounds.
This year 85 pensioners were given two purses each: a red one holding a £5 coin commemorating the Duke of Edinburgh's 90th birthday and a 50p coin for the Olympics in London next year; and a white one with Maundy money, legal tender silver composed of one- two- three- and four-pence coins amounting to 85p: as many pensioners and as much money as the sovereign's age.
It's probably the thought that counts.
Had Maundy Thursday been a day earlier – it's never coincided with the Queen's birthday before – presumably one of the pensioners would have missed out and they'd each have got 1p less.
It is a service full of flummery, with clerics and flunkies bearing titles such as Keeper of the Closet and Lord High Almoner, and Wandsmen proceeding in stately procession, and Yeomen of the Guard bearing the purses aloft on vast golden dishes.
But at its heart is the simple idea of the sovereign remembering Christian injunctions to be thoughtful of the poor and needy: Maundy derives from mandatum, meaning commandment. As an offertory line sung during the service says: "Give alms of thy goods and turn never thy face from any poor man: and then the face of the Lord shall not be turned away from thee."
The Queen appears to take that seriously, as have her predecessors for more than 800 years, though in Hanoverian times they gave up the additional ritual of washing the old folk's feet in imitation of Christ at the last supper. Nonetheless the Lord High Almoner, or bishop of Manchester as he is known in his day job, carries a ceremonial towel, just in case. The sovereign herself still holds a nosegay of flowers and scented herbs, presumably to ward off any residual smell from hoi polloi.
The lucky 85, many of them younger than the Queen herself, were drawn this year not only from London but the more remote Anglican dioceses covering the scattered parishes of Europe and the island churches of Sodor and Man in the middle of the Irish Sea.
Some were clearly overcome. "I am a bit emotional about it," said William Herring, 82. "I think I must have been chosen because I have been playing the organ in church since I was 14. I have seen her before, but not since I watched the coronation in the pouring rain in - when was it? - 1953."
Nearby, Henry Hely-Hutchinson, an abbey volunteer who also received the purses, was reminiscing about how as a teenager she had been invited to make up the numbers at a dance attended by the young princess. "She did speak to me today. But I didn't hear what she said, not because I am deaf but because I was too emotional. I don't know what I will do with the coins – keep them for my 11 grandchildren, I suppose."
As she gazed beadily around the abbey, the Queen may have reflected the hope of grandmothers everywhere that the sun would still be shining in a week's time for that wedding. Certainly the congregation – women in summer frocks, gents in suits or uniforms – appeared as if rehearsing. So perhaps was the BBC, with Huw Edwards commentating – in preparation for his nine-hour marathon next week.