Queen Elizabeth II's four-day Diamond Jubilee celebration gets underway Saturday, and London could hardly be more prepared. Or cleaner.
Spiffed up and shiny, festooned with Union-Jack bunting everywhere, including around park trees, with the queen's smiling visage plastered on every teacup and flat surface in sight, this city knows it will not see a moment like this come again soon.
It's been 115 years since the United Kingdom celebrated the only other monarch, Queen Victoria, to reach 60 years in reign; it won't happen again in the lifetime of anyone alive today.
The Queen's Diamond Jubilee
Enjoy USA TODAY's coverage of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee, celebrating her 60 years as England's monarch.
- PHOTOS: A celebration of all things Elizabeth II
- INTERACTIVE: The Windsor Famil y Tree
- SCHEDULE: The weekend's events where you can watch
- TWITTER: Follow coverage with USA TODAY's @usatmpuente
- VIDEO: An in-depth look at the Diamond Jubilee weekend
So a million or more Brits are likely to crowd the streets and the riverbanks of London this weekend to shout, "Well done, Ma'am!" to the 86-year-old great-granny who's spent six decades on their throne, currency and stamps, and in their hearts.
"I have a lot of respect for the queen. I appreciate her dignity, the way she holds things together," says Ruth Pritchard, 62, visiting from Wales whe re she lives on the same island where Prince William and his wife, Catherine, duchess of Cambridge, live. "(The queen) is a very spiritual person, too, and she's a good role model."
She was wandering in St. James's Park opposite Buckingham Palace on Friday, observing the crowds and watching a marching band of military bagpipers, red-coated soldiers in bearskin hats and mounted troops march down The Mall. Her daughter, Eirian Pritchard, 30, says even young people are paying more attention to the royals, thanks to Will and Kate. "I like a love story," she says. "And Kate seems quite nice."
American tourists Maria and Mike Granatosky of Orlando watched the passing parade of sightseers and t he construction workers building the stage for Monday's star-studded concert. They were heading out of London on their long-planned vacation and to "avoid the crowds," but they were still impressed with the buzz around the jubilee. "She's not our queen, but it's important to people here," Maria says. "But it's nice to see all this (preparation) beforehand."
Apart from the genuine desire to celebrate Her Majesty, the Diamond Jubilee is official London's chance to practice for the next big thing to hit town, the 2012 Summer Olympics, opening in July. Crowd and traffic control, not to mention security issues, will be even more challenging during the games, which last longer and are likely to draw more international visitors than the more homegrown jubilee celebration.
Homegrown does not mean humdrum â€" not fr om the British, justly famous for their ceremonial flourishes. People here are not only proud of the queen, they're proud of their national talent for expressing their pride.
The next few days will see public events that encompass history and modernity, the future of the monarchy and the celebration of all things British. There will be horse racing and river sailing, a star-packed concert, a church service and gilded coach procession, bell-ringing, beacon-lighting and an air force flight over the Buckingham Palace balcony.
Right beside the queen throughout will be her family, with all eyes especially on her grandson and second-in-line to the throne, Prince William, and Catherine, the new royal stars. The jubilee celebrates the queen and all she's done for the country for the past six decades, but she and everyone else here know that Will and Kate are the future.
The Thames River Pageant on Sunday afternoon is the signature theatrical event of the weekend, a bow to history and to the river that has played so central a role in the life of the nation and the monarchy. A million people are likely to line the riverbanks, and millions more will watch at home, as the queen sails down the Thames accompanied by a flotilla of 1,000 ships of all shapes and sizes.
She and close family, including Will and Kate, will be on The Spirit of Chartwell, a luxury river cruiser redecorated in antique style and equipped with tiny robotic cameras operated by the BBC. It's the first time so many senior royals will travel together in one boat. Other members of her family will be on other boats in the flotilla.
Just ahead of them will be Gloriana (as in the first Queen Elizabeth), a 94-foot barge hand-carved and decorated to resemble the sort of barges royals used to travel the river hundreds of years ago. Manned by 18 rowers, includ ing Olympians, it's the first such barge built in more than a century.
"The River Thames used to be the place where royal pageantry took place, and it's not happened for hundreds of years," says pageant master Adrian Evans, a river advocate who came up with the idea and spent two years organizing it. Now the pageant has "really caught the popular mood. … It's a one-off event, very unlikely to be done again, and people will say, 'I just have to be there.' "
As is usually the case with the British, there are wacky aspects to the jubilee, with a variety of eccentric ways to honor the queen: Marmite, the yeast-based spread the British unaccountably love, has temporarily renamed itself Ma'amite.
There's bunting draped across Sloane Square and flags at the subwa y entrances, which would be normal for any national celebration. A giant crown-shaped floral sculpture in St James's Park? Not so much. It tops 12 feet, weighs 5 tons and took five weeks to make in Cornwall using 13,500 individual plants, according to media reports here.
There's a newly updated wax figure of the queen at Madame Tussauds, which is standard fare for any celebrity these days. The tiny Lego figure of the queen with a diamond-encrusted crown set in a miniature model of Buckingham Palace is more unusual. It's at the Legoland theme park a few miles from Windsor Castle. Even more unusual is the sand sculpture of the seated queen by artist Nicola Wood at the seventh annu al sand sculpture festival in Weston-Super-Mare, a town about 140 miles west of London.
Even Heathrow Airport got into the jubilee spirit, painting a giant Union Jack with a silhouette of the queen on one of the runways so passengers can see it as they fly in.
Once famously derided (by Napoleon, no less) as a nation of shopkeepers, Britain's retailers are once again in the full roar of souvenir selling mode, just as they were for last year's royal wedding. According to a survey by consumer savings site Moneysupermarket.com, jubilee shoppers could spent nearly twice as much as last year â€" up to $1.3 billion â€" during the jubilee weekend.
Some of that will be souvenirs â€" lots of souvenirs. From the jubilee tea towels sold on the streets to the shop windows cluttered with queen-emblazone d ceramic plates and canvas totes, to the elegant china and other baubles sold by the Royal Collection (royalcollectionshop.co.uk, which helps fund the upkeep of the royal palaces and art collections), queen kitsch is flying out doors and across the Internet.
Diamond Jubilee key chains and teaspoons, cookies and chocolates, hats and jewelery, bells and whistles are for sale for a few pounds (or dollars from the likes of Amazon.com). For pricier fare, the Diamond Jubilee Limited Edition Loving Cup from the Royal Collection is sold out (at about $280), but the Tea Caddy is still available at the same price, and the sky-blue Velvet Cushion is only about $150.
Hotels are selling Diamond Jubilee packages, restaurants and hotels are offering special Diamond Jubilee luxury tea service, pubs are selling Diamond Jubilee beer. Skyscrapers, such as the building Altitude 360 on the river, are selling spectacular sky-high viewing spac es, complete with picnic hampers of Champagne and crumpets, to watch the river pageant Sunday (only $800 per person). A giant portrait of the queen, made of 3,120 little cakes, will be on display (and later consumed) at a festival at the riverside Battersea Park, where thousands are likely to watch when the pageant sails by.
And for true luxury shopping, there's the all important Diamond Jubilee shoes. British designer ArunaSeth, whose shoes have clad the tootsies of Kate Middleton's younger sister, paparazzi queen Pippa Middleton, has created a line of limited edition Swarovski crystal-covered wedges i n royal blue with Union-Jack trim. They're at Harrods. Only $4,800.
"I wanted to design something that celebrates being really proud to be British," she says. "And what better way than a flag? But they're really comfortable, with Italian nappa leather padding. The queen could wear them."
The queen, a woman famous for her sensible shoes? Maybe not.
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