Windsor Losses

I’ve had one brush with British royalty. The Fabulous Wife and I took a trip to Great Britain in May 2014. We spent nearly a week in Edinburgh, Scotland, staying at a hotel on the Royal Mile across the street from St. Giles Cathedral. On a Sunday morning we got up late, around 9 a.m. Within fifteen minutes a horde of bagpipes and clattering drums started playing, and they didn’t stop. Thinking it a parade, I grabbed my camera and ran outside. The Royal Mile was blocked off and crawling with security, but not for a parade. The band had gone silent and was standing at attention at the west end of the cathedral courtyard. In front of the band and to its right, dozens of blue-shirted, black-pantsed adolescent boys waited expectantly in long rows. I joined a crowd three-deep behind metal stanchions, hoping to catch a better glimpse of what was going on. Thanks to the idiot tourists in front of me who figured the show was over because the band had finished playing, I soon got to the front. From there I could see that the security detail and assorted bigwigs by the cathedral door (some of them literally wearing big wigs) were sticking around. That meant we were still waiting for the main event, whatever it might be. <a href="https://andygoldblatt.medium.com/windsor-losses-19095a715947">Website</a>