No radio. No social media. And absolutely no television. Last week, a self-imposed news blackout was the only way to avoid coronation overload.

The fawning attention paid to ermine robes and gold-plated carriages while Europe’s most unequal “kingdom” tumbles further into poverty and international irrelevance.

The army of hingers-on – even cut down to modest proportions lest the scale of Britain’s bloated “first family” might finally offend.

The much-hyped speculation about Harry turning up with a portrait of his late mother and talking/not talking to his brother. The need to know all these slight personalities by their respectability-conferring dukedoms, earldoms and duchesseries. And yes, I know there is no such word. Just as there is no demand in Sneckie to have Andrew as their Earl.

The TV news on silent for 15 minutes till important news of Tory losses in English and Welsh local elections was broadcast in the “and finally” slot.

The fact that news would make no reference to the 72% of Scots with no plan to watch the coronation or the 10,000 plus marching through Glasgow that day, in support of an elected head of state in an independent Scotland, the largest march since the pandemic.

Based on the weary experience of a lifetime – and particularly the blanket coverage during last year’s Jubilee celebrations, in which Scotland recorded 14 official street parties in the UK total of 16,000 – this is the mental picture painted a week ago.

Was I wrong? Was I alone? Tuning out from the big state events of your own country is a bizarre phenomenon that’s yet utterly commonplace for the republican, progressive and independence-supporting sections of the Scottish population – and means many Scots have no officially sanctioned state occasions to wholeheartedly join, own and celebrate. Instead, half of us habitually weave self-imposed news blackouts into our lives, just to keep our collective blood pressure under control.

I appreciate that for many Scots, including my late mother, that’s an alien experience. She had huge respect for the Queen and a feeling of connection, having lived through the war and the vast social changes that followed. In another quite separate part of her personality though, mum was a fierce supporter of the underdog and keenly aware of the feudal land ownership system that repressed Scots for 800 years, with monarchs of all stripes sitting pretty and untouchable on top.

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Somehow, this Caithness lass took her children to visit the cleared, ruined croft houses, the lonely rocky inlets and the precarious, exposed, clifftops where all trace of forbears have been removed – yet remained quite unwilling to put the two together.

Which was fine. In a torn territory where every public building must fly two separate flags to express Scotland’s civic identity, we function by overlooking the unacceptable – failing to connect unelected privilege, empty glens, sky-high land prices and a permanent rural housing crisis with the developed world’s most unequal distribution of land. How can folk tolerate the status quo if they join the dots, and follow the evidence – especially the evidence of their own family histories?

That’s why so many folk who “just want a quiet life” plunge instead into the minutiae of another royal family and their distant, privileged lives. It’s called growing up and being Scottish/British.

I would have watched the whole fandango with mum had she still been alive, out of love and respect for her and managed to see the whole thing as a staid warm-up act for the truly life-affirming, zany pageantry of Eurovision. But not now. Scotland has bigger fish to fry and the first step is wrestling ourselves free from the present uncomplaining mindset. Sycophants to unelected hereditary monarchs – is that who we really are?

Of course, it’s easy for monarchists to point out that those who took to the streets this weekend in support of an independent Scottish republic were a tiny fraction of those who took to the streets on a regular basis, in the years between 2014 and the Covid lockdown. That’s true, though it’s somewhat ironic to have the magnitude of those massive demonstrations recognised in hindsight, when their scale and significance was neither broadcast nor acknowledged at the time.

It’s true, too, that the SNP is facing some massive challenges right now, to which they might add the decision to send their top brass to a British coronation instead of appearing as speakers at the Glasgow or Edinburgh independence rallies. Interestingly, and importantly, none of the Alba speakers made a big deal of Humza Yousaf’s absence. Since Northern Ireland’s First Minister in waiting, Michelle O’Neill, also accepted the invitation to attend – an historic move for a Sinn Fein leader – there was grudging acceptance in the Glasgow crowd that Scotland’s First Minister had good reason to follow suit.

The current priority for many in the Yes movement is the establishment of a constitutional convention to start planning a concerted, funded and serious independence strategy with the involvement of all pro-independence parties and the largest umbrella groups representing the myriad local groups. That’s only possible if the new SNP leader breathes life into the project before the summer recess and if rivals like Alex Salmond can demonstrate they lead a party whose elected representatives can resist kicking their biggest rival when it’s down.

Saturday was an important step forward in that respect, and could have been even bigger if either Westminster SNP leader – past or present – had opted not to attend the coronation and made common cause with dedicated punters braving bursts of driving rain on Glasgow Green instead.

Agreed, put that way, it doesn’t sound like much of a choice. Tucked up inside Westminster Abbey surrounded by pomp, ceremony, warmth, and dryness, or tramping through the streets of Glasgow to stand in a downpour – torrential enough to short-circuit the sound system and prompt impromptu crowd singing before the skilled AUOB volunteers fixed the fault and the rally went ahead.

The monarchy has a lot going for it: £1.8 billion that sits behind “modest” King Charles. International status as the world’s highest profile remnant of unelected privilege and an enduring ability to attract the great and good as celebrity guests to legacy-endorsing events like the coronation, along with 17 million viewers in Britain and maybe 300 million worldwide.

But more watched the Queen’s funeral last year. Monarchy is a waning attachment while independence is a heartfelt cause - even if its main party-political vehicle is currently having a long-overdue service.

Sovereignty in Scotland lies with the people. And causes that stir the people to meet and march will outlast every unloved institution.