”All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” Scrapbook.com

As discussed in detail by Caroline Shenton, the churchings of Queen Philippa, for which the details following Isabella's birth in 1333 survive, represented a 'gigantic festival of a family whose start in life had been extremely unsteady'.

It could be argued there is a note of shared significance to both deaths. Both feel like reminders that the real divide, so starkly present at this Pharaonic sporting super-show, is between the powerful and the powerless.

This does not take into account the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are harmlessly and charmingly insane in a peculiarly Manhattanite manner.