The Queen left Buckingham Palace for the last time early today, to make her final journey along crowd-lined streets of London to Westminster Hall. There Britain's longest-serving monarch is lying in state for the world to mourn. Video / Supplied
OPINION:
Still weighing up whether to join that daunting queue as it makes its way to Westminster Hall to pay homage to our beloved late monarch, I am eager for feedback from those who have already made the pilgrimage. Is it worth it?
"She was so calm and powerful," reported my 23-year-old god-daughter who finally stood in front of Elizabeth the Irreplaceable's coffin on its catafalque at 1.02am yesterday morning. "Definitely worth the eight-hour wait, but it's easy to forget how tiring the queue is until you've seen her and are walking home."
Exultant but exhausted, the author Ysenda Maxtone Graham spent yesterday morning in bed with "jelly legs". She says it took nine hours after joining the queue near London Bridge. There was a false dawn when Ysenda and the new friends she had made thought the line was moving swiftly only to get stuck in "Ordeal by Zig-Zag" in Victoria Tower Gardens where 8000 kettled people snake up and down, up and down. "Luton Airport seems a cinch by comparison." Actual dawn was breaking by the time Maxtone Graham walked into the hall and saw the great Queen she had revered in life protected in death by statue-still Coldstream Guards. "To be in there was overwhelmingly moving. Utterly beautiful and still."
The UK's genius for pageantry is matched only by our Olympic endurance in waiting our turn. Photo / AP
The British genius for pageantry is matched only by Olympic endurance in waiting our turn. Breaking news yesterday that there was a special fast lane for MPs, who have been given four timed tickets for guests, if you please, is the only thing to have dented the wonderful mood of national unity since Her Majesty left us eight days ago. Crowds lining up along the Thames were understandably furious. We can't abide queue-jumpers. Politicians, who have been shut up (a blessed relief!) by the passing of an outstanding human who achieved more than they ever will, should step into line with the men, women, even children, who emulate the stoicism their sovereign taught them.
There is a profound simplicity, almost a holiness, to the impulse which is calling thousands to that place, I think. "If Her Majesty did all that for us for seventy years, then we can jolly well put up with a bit of discomfort for her" is the attitude.
"I cannot lead you into battle," the young Queen told the nation in her first televised Christmas message in 1957, "I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands."
People look at flowers and messages placed for Queen Elizabeth II at Green Park memorial next to Buckingham Palace in London. Photo / AP
From every corner of these old islands, members of the Silent Majority converge on the capital, instinctively wanting to repay her devotion, her love. Through the wonders of technology, the BBC has launched a live stream of the lying in state for people unable to travel or queue. It is utterly mesmerising. Every kind of Briton imaginable has shown up. Old, young, prosperous, struggling, soldiers, students, formally-attired, sweat-shirted, families, radiant girls, weeping widows, a perky terrier who would have made instant friends with Her Majesty. Each has a few seconds alone in front of the coffin.
A lad in a hoodie paused awkwardly before bowing his head. Behind him, visibly touched by this act of obeisance in one so young, stood a veteran, the chest of his macintosh bristling with medals. When his turn came, the old soldier took off his beret, put down his walking stick, snapped to attention and saluted.
A weeping lady in a wheelchair sported a squidgy Queen Mother memorial hat. A dashingly handsome man in a spiffy suit dropped to one knee as if proposing to a sweetheart. That one really got to me.
Mothers brought tiny babies so, one day, they could say they were there as the page of history turned. A worker wearing a yellow fluorescent jacket blew a kiss at the coffin and turned briskly away to hide his emotion. Watching people trying not to cry makes you cry.
Members of the public pay their respects as they walk past the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II. Photo / AP
Next, a tiny Indian woman pressed her upright hands together in prayer and bowed with exquisite grace. The claim by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on Oprah that the British monarchy is racist doesn't seem to have deterred Britons from every ethnic minority coming to express their sorrow and venerate the memory of the only queen they have ever known, or wanted. (That shameless pair, who caused the monarch such distress in the last 18 months of her life, should count themselves lucky to be included in the ceremonies at all. No wonder our sublime new Princess of Wales, clearly devastated but holding it together wearing the Diamond and Pearl Leaf Brooch which belonged to the Queen, seems hardly able to bear to look at them.)
Many of the thousands coming every hour now to Westminster Hall to pay tribute just shut their eyes, as if taking a picture for the memory. They know we will not see her like again. Watching the live stream late into the night – the gentle courtesy, the respect, the personal loss expanded somehow into a shared feeling of gratitude and hope - is to have one's faith in the British people restored. Queen Elizabeth II never lost it.
People wait in line to pay tribute to Queen Elizabeth II in London. Photo / AP
On Monday morning, VIPs, ambassadors, presidents and panjandrums, flunkies in furbelows, global dignitaries and foreign royalty will get out of their limousines and smoothly enter the Abbey for the funeral of the century. No queues. It will be a stirring sight, but the most heartfelt tribute to the peerless lady in the coffin will have already taken place.
