Howard Jacobson: Pushing, shoving, mawkish singing – my unmissable day out at the Jubilee pageant

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water. Only a shame I didn't get to see it. It wasn't for want of trying. I'm not a pageant man myself, but my wife's imagination had been fired by Antony and Cleopatra when she was young, and I accepted that the spectacle of a queen on a river – whether or not there would be pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, fanning her in the rain – was not one she could bear to miss.