And still they came and the drums sounded the slow beat and the bell of the Elizabeth Tower, Big Ben, tolled …. one ring for every year of the late Queen’s life.

I opened the newspaper on Sunday and found that Christina Lamb, a well-known reporter and commentator, had started her column: “And still they come. From morning till night, tens of thousands of people of all ages, backgrounds and places across the land defy warnings of 24 hour waits and swarm to pay their last respects to their monarch – and to be part of the greatest queue on earth. ‘The Queue’ has its own Twitter feed, Instagram account and YouTube channel.”

We arrived back in the UK on Thursday of last week but were following the ramifications of the Queen’s death on the BBC News. Back home and the sense of loss is palpable. Should I join the queue to see her lying in State? Four hundred thousand did, including our Yoga Studio’s co-owner Simon and David, Mimi’s husband, both pulled inexorably to be part of this moment in history.

The remarkable success of The Queue was down to a Professor Keith Still who advises on the science of crowds. He suggests The Queue became an animated object, with a life of its own! “The crowd itself is looking after people within it. People need to know what is happening in advance, to have their expectations met and to be kept constantly informed and updated and, in The Queue, they have had that. So long as people know what’s happening, what’s expected of them, how long it’s going to take, they no longer face the uncertainty.” (Note 1)

On Wednesday 14^th September the late Queen’s coffin was taken from Buckingham Palace to The Palace of Westminster, the enormous hall built in 1096 where it was to ‘Lie in State’. As a muffled Big Ben tolled, the solemn procession made its way down The Mall that only recently had been the site of the Platinum Jubilee party. There was something very hypnotic about this spectacle; bands playing dirges from Beethoven or Mendelssohn, flags flying and leather reins creaking, the Gun Carriage with its precious cargo draped in the Royal Standard pulled by horses from Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery, escorted by men of Her Household Cavalry, all marching at a slow 76 paces per minute.

Her ‘Lying in State’, surrounded by officers, by family members, by Beefeaters, was televised live by the BBC. “And still they came ……” The old, the young, the curious, those the Queen had touched, families and those in wheelchairs, Chelsea Pensioners and retired military personnel, those who felt it their duty, their obligation ….. and to hell with the potential problems of queuing. Over five days 400, 000 people filed past her coffin, including Michael Tropp from Atlanta, who spent nine hours on an aeroplane to spend a further 8 hours in The Queue! “For 70 years she’s been the mother of this country. There will never be anything like this again in my lifetime.” I sense this echoes in ever heart here in the United Kingdom.

Monday 19^th September 2022 – Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral. The coffin was carried by eight bearers from 1^st Battalion The Grenadier Guards (Note 2) from the hall and placed on the Victorian Gun Carriage. The Gun Carriage was then pulled by 96 Royal Navy ratings to Westminster Abbey; a further 44 were used at the rear as a brake! (Note 3) Historically the State Funeral Service took place in St George’s Chapel in Windsor but, in a break with this tradition, The Queen had wished it to be held in Westminster Abbey. Plans for this mammoth state occasion were first drawn up on 2006 and updated regularly.

My heart had gone out to a dear friend and retired Gunner officer Mark Corbett-Burcher, who has a responsibility within the Ministry of Defence for the protocol of ‘Inward Visits’; he would get involved in the planning for VIP visits to the UK. This week has seen close to 500 ‘VIPs’, foreign Heads of Government, Presidents and Royalty, coming to the Capital; can’t imagine he had much sleep before Tuesday!! 

Following the service the funeral procession made its way back to Buckingham Palace and on to Hyde Park Corner, where the coffin was transferred to a hearse for the drive to Windsor Castle. There, after a Committal Service, the coffin was placed in the Royal Vault.

Old enough to have watched the State Funeral of the United States President JF Kennedy, I saw for the first time the age-old tradition of a Commander-in-Chief’s coffin being followed by his horse, with his riding boots fixed in the stirrups facing backwards. As Her Majesty’s coffin approached the final few hundred metres before the walls of Windsor Castle, there was her favourite Fell pony Emma. Given her life-long love of horses, I half-expected to see her riding boots in the stirrups …… facing backwards. 

Somewhere in one of the services William Wordsworth’s poem The Extinction of the Venetian Republic was quoted. The ‘she’ in the poem is Venice so substituting HM The Queen seems a bit odd – but I wasn’t asked!!

“ ……….. She was a maiden City, bright and free; …….. She must espouse the everlasting Sea. ….. Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade of that which once was great is passed away.”

Everyone’s mother dies; one’s father too! When you get into your mid-90s the chances are sooner rather than later. In a monarchy the people have no say in who is the king or queen; it’s just luck as to whether they are good, bad or indifferent!

In Elizabeth II we were extremely lucky!

Richard 23^rd September 2022

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Today is the Autumnal Equinox, when there’s an equal amount of daylight and darkness everywhere in the world and the sun rises exactly east and sets exactly west!

Note 1 And of course the converse is true: “As soon as that information flow stops that you get a degree of uncertainty and people start behaving as individuals rather than as a collective.” he says.

Note 2 One, Fletcher Cox is 19, reflecting the youth of the Bearer Party

Note 3 During Queen Victoria’s funeral in February 1901, the icy cobbles around Windsor Castle caused the horses pulling the hearse to slip and shy, so much so that at one point it seemed the coffin would fall off its carriage! Quick thinking officials entrusted the pulling to chaps in uniform and that’s what happens now.