I used to live on a road in London that the neighbours would often close for street parties – I’ll just come out and say it, Stoke Newington – and frankly I found the whole charade quite irritating. I was always cycling into a big plant pot someone had dragged into the road, that sort of thing. There would be a marquee up early on a Saturday with 6 Music playing too loudly for my hangover. You learn a lot about your neighbours when you watch them sit in the middle of the road and eat a focaccia finger: who, for example, has quite such a substantial amount of fabric bunting on hand at all times, and space for it in their house? I began to see them less as people and more like animals I might disinterestedly stare at in a zoo: lizards in a tank, pointing a finger to a lidless tub of hummus while saying, “Ooh that’s good – what’s that one? Red pepper? Red pepper. Yeah no I’ve never had that. Red pepper”.
Anyway, big year for it. The Queen is doing something – still being the Queen, by the looks of it, well done – and we, the peasants, are being urged to celebrate her for it. With the platinum jubilee around the corner, a host of very mild British stars – Gareth Southgate, Ross Kemp, Prue Leith, Big Alan Titchmarsh – are backing plans for a celebratory street party, where they hope 10 million of us will block up the roads and put stupid union flag wigs on, and wave and rah for the Queen. It’s called National Thank You Day, and to make it all feel slightly less embarrassing it’s being wrapped up with all the NHS rainbow stuff and community spirit newspeak of the past two years. It’s quite muddy messaging, actually. It really could do with one extra spin around the thinktank.
