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When you’re planning a party to celebrate the coronation, some things are set in stone.
Like hanging reams of red, white and blue bunting. Wearing crowns, tiaras, gowns and soccer jerseys. Playing patriotic songs by artists ranging from Tom Jones to the Spice Girls. And laying on enough food to sink a Royal Navy ship.
In the mood for a party: Joanne McGuffie (left), with stepmother Sheila Griffiths and father John McGuffie.Credit: Simon Schluter
Joanne McGuffie will serve pork pies, curry and chips (which she terms “the national dish”), a Victoria sponge, a trifle, Bakewell tarts, crisps and bowls of lollies, or “sweeties from home”, as she calls them.
Not all Brits like the monarchy but they love a party, and McGuffie, 52, of Frankston, is among many expatriates planning knees-ups as they watch King Charles III being crowned on Saturday night, Melbourne time.
McGuffie says that during the TV broadcast, they’ll turn the volume up for highlights like when Charles and Camilla, who will become Queen at the coronation, appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony.
Otherwise, “we’ll be dancing, singing and eating. Having a good time.”
Feeding the troops: Guests at Joanne McGuffie’s coronation party won’t go hungry or thirsty.Credit: Simon Schluter
The party, for 16 relatives including her father John McGuffie and stepmother Sheila Griffiths – the latter channelling Camilla in gown and gloves – will take place in McGuffie’s own “English pub”.
During COVID-19 lockdowns McGuffie converted her shed into The Stay Inn “so I could feel like I was going out”.
It’s a riot of Union Jack and Liverpool Football Club flags, an old fireplace, a cosy bar, dartboards, a stag’s head, musical instruments and a disco ball.
Being from Liverpool, she will play Beatles songs; as a child, her father briefly lived next door to Paul McCartney. “Everyone’s got a Beatles story in Liverpool.”
Joanne McGuffie as a girl at a street party in Speke, Liverpool, to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.Credit: McGuffie family
Food will include 1970s party snacks involving pineapple, cubed cheese and pickled onions, in a nod to the street parties held across Britain in 1977 for Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee.
McGuffie was just seven but remembers the happy day her street, in the Liverpool suburb of Speke, was closed off and strung with bunting.
Families sat outdoors at tables laden with food. It was a “scorching hot day”, she says. “Everyone wore red, white and blue clothes. There were balloons everywhere. It was huge.”
The following year, John McGuffie was offered a job at a Melbourne printing factory and the family emigrated to Australia.
Joanne remembers the weather here seemed “tropical” and they loved swimming in a motel pool.
The family returned to England months later after McGuffie’s grandfather died, but came for good in 1986.
Now McGuffie, a qualified nurse and mother of one who works in public health management, sees that her family went from “this small working-class area in Liverpool to a better life”.
McGuffie reckons half her family “aren’t that bothered” with the monarchy. The coronation party can be seen as “more of a celebration of ‘home’. Not necessarily of the royal family. Just celebrating your roots.”
But McGuffie will raise a toast and say God save the King.
She says this reign is Charles’s opportunity to redeem himself from past indiscretions and to foster cohesion in the vein of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
“I like the royal family,” she says. “I love the pageantry, the history, the pomp and ceremony. I love the rituals. I think it gives structure.
“I don’t think any other country has got a royal family or traditions quite like it. I would hate to see it lost.”
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