Royal Flush

The Duke of Norfolk, the Archbishop of Canterbury and 350 Officers of the Gold Staff who will act as ushers at the Abbey Ceremony, last week made a tour of 100 toilets in remodeled Westminster Abbey. These have been specially built for the convenience of Britain's aristocracy privileged to remain in the Abbey without a chance of escape for six and one-half hours. A jesting officer of the Gold Staff ordered all the cisterns to be tested together. As a workman obeyed the command, the Archbishop protested: "Tut, tut, that will never do. It's just like Niagara!"

Top-hatted West-Enders returning from their revels loitered in the chilly streets of London early last Sunday morning to watch the Duke of Norfolk's partly-dressed rehearsal of the Coronation procession. Thousands of others rose from their beds while it was still dark, turned out to get a better idea of what happens when a British monarch is crowned than most of them will get on the day of the ceremony. At 6:16 a.m. the procession moved off en route for Westminster Abbey. As the four-ton gilded coach, similar to that in which King George & Queen Elizabeth will ride, rolled along behind eight horses with its Household Cavalry escort, policemen and soldiers snapped their heels to attention. Outside the Abbey, the procession halted while an imaginary Coronation service unwound itself, and officials with furrowed brows peered at stopwatches. On the cavalcade's return journey any wisps of sleep that still hovered over the 200,000 sightseers were swept away by the rousing brass of massed bands. Because the procession took 30 minutes longer than the schedule allows there was many an anxious head-to-head in the Duke of Norfolk's Buckingham Gate office this week as schemes for pruning a few seconds here and there were solemnly discussed.

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