Caught between Roundheads and Cavaliers Don't be ridiculous, she says. If by "jubilating," I mean the act of physically attending some purposeless, money-wasting and hastily got-up event connected with the utterly stupid er, er, um, er (she won't even dignify it by giving its name, so I have to chant JUBILEE, JUBILEE, DIAMOND JUBILEE at her so as to force it to her notice). She expostulates that the news is unlistenable to. She won't deign to acknowledge that it is happening. She won't accept even that there is an "it," and if I carry on teasing, she will turn into Bill Clinton and debate what the meaning of "is" is. I want to know why she doesn't find even some cultural interest in the Queen's Jubilee. When we were all in Greece, I remind her, and the children were small, it was you who noticed the handwritten leaflets pinned to the trees and picked out that tomorrow was the eve of Ayios Nikolaos and dragged us halfway up the mountain in an expensive taxi so the children could have an interesting cultural experience. We sent them into the church, which was blazing with candles, to line up and get their hunk of bread, and they all came out saying "Wow." "Well, that was an interesting cultural experience," she says. My friend says "tchah" and "faugh" and: "I am not in the least interested in any aspect of this nonsense." She was a Londoner before she married and moved to north Oxford. She was a Roundhead Londoner, it's clear: a republican at 15, like the young Sam Pepys, who skipped out of St Paul's School to witness the regicide (of which he approved, though he didn't like to remember his approval after the Restoration). Now that the thing is almost upon us, I realise I am not marking or celebrating the Diamond Jubilee in any way, and I am smitten with remorse. Why didn't I book a pod in the London Eye? Or spend the last year diligently sucking up to people with a prime river view? There are loads of them: MPs, obviously, but there are people in Millbank Tower, or the Shell Centre. There's Jeffrey Archer. Long shot, but doable. My neighbour up the hill whisked down to see me yesterday to bemoan the fact that nothing at all was happening down our way, Jubilee-wise. It is true, I fear. There is no great cultural experience going on round here. Nor any small ones, now that the pub is shuttered and locked up. There is a hill a mile or two away called Beacon Hill, but I have not discovered whether there's going to be a beacon on it. There is the school-and-church fête coming up, but not for weeks yet. "Honestly, this village!" said my neighbour. She was looking quite Cavalier in a red top, a white jacket and blue trousers, but I forbore to remark. I gave her a copy of Mary Killen's new book, How The Queen Can Make You Happy (it is charming, and very cheery-uppy) and, as we walked back to the gate, she noticed my new border, which has been divided into four smaller (and easier to weed) beds by a St Andrew's cross of newly seeded paths. "Is it a Union Jack?" she said, delighted. Have you done it for the Jubilee? Um. Not exactly for the Jubilee.