My heart leaps up

Oh, the emtions from the royal wedding. First, the music -from hubert Parry’s wonderful Introite – I was glad to his heart breaking Jerusalem, I thought my heart would break.

Jerusalem is my school song. As young people growing up post war, we all felt we all felt we were going to build a new Jerusalem. It would be place where our parents wouldn’t live through a daily boming Blits. We all dreamed of a world that would have learned its lesson from that past.

My parents lived in Enfield, in north east London. |It was famous as the place that built the Bren Gun and the Sten Gun. In fact, the joke growing up was that you never argued with anyone’s mom in my home town, because they could all put together a Bren Gun or a Sten Gun faster than any man.

It also made Enfield the target of heavy bombing from the Luftwaffe. My parents’ house had every window blown out by a bomb that landed nearby.

That’s why the flypast at today’s wedding was so emotional for me. My parents told me t was the Spitfire that won the Battle of Britain. Watching that plane make it up the Mall, you knew that all was well in London.

Who couldn’t choke back a tear?