Union jack bowler hats, top hats, sailor hats, cowboy – cowboy? – hats. Umbrellas everywhere. Union jack leggings, jeggings, faces and hair. Among the crowds a thousand Wills and Kates (face masks a fiver each); cardboard cut outs of the Queen. Is it all too silly to be true? Wind-swept, rain-streaked, the choir cuts through. Never mind the words (‘Land of Hope’ – that’s dope), or the cold, old lady they are singing to (nine degrees and falling: you can read the temperature by the way she folds her hands together). Only listen to the sound of a thousand years of choral singing, harnessed and let loose again in the mouths of young men and women.