Frankly, my attempt to join The Queue was shambolic. It was a last minute decision, I just picked up some things and raced to the station. On a slow train, I read an announcement that the queue was closed for 6 hours, and so got off at Stevenage intending to give up. I then read on the BBC site that the claim of a closure was untrue, and so got on a train again. Hopeless dithering.
Eventually I was let into Southwark Park around 11.30am, and joined a queue to join the queue for The Queue.
Wove backwards and forwards for 3½ hours, walking nearly 3 miles and making around 300 yards as any crow, or queue-jumper, would fly.
A screen grab from Strava shows my extremely indirect route through the park.
Even though the lanes were quite wide, the queue very quickly established itself, and I started to embed in the group around me. As usual, I was unsure to start with but we ended up as firm and supportive friends.
In my rush I had come out in shorts, as I had been wearing for months, but rapidly realised that these would be (a) cold (b) inappropriate for the occasion. I could get coffee and food along the way, but how could I source some trousers? There were no suitable shops, but a wonderful colleague nearby not only brought coffee and cakes for my gang, but her husband then turned up as a sort of trouser-deliveroo. Relief.
Plodded on and on in the sunshine, chatting to each other, stopping and starting, diving into a Coop for snacks and a can of beer and then rejoining my place, protected by my group. These included a 7-year-old girl (who I shall call Laura) in her Brownie uniform, encouraged by her gran for hour after hour, a 75-year-old with her friend and daughter, and a Japanese gentleman who apparently didn’t speak a word of English, but who did take a lot of photographs.
After admiring the architecture along the Thames, we got to the checkpoint at Tower Bridge at around 5pm, after 5½ hours, where we got our wristbands and finally joined The Queue proper.
Somebody said there was around 6 hours to go, which was encouraging, but wrong – it was 9 hours. A toilet break and a chance to put on trousers, which turned out to be rather large. Belted as tight as possible, as it would not do to have one’s trousers descend at a crucial moment. I had already read of “Man detained after ‘disturbance’ at Queen’s lying-in-state”, which was quickly followed by my daughter’s WhatsApp message – ‘Dad, what did you do?’
Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, HMS Belfast and all the subsequent bridges were so impressive in the beautiful early evening light – on and on, past statues of chimpanzees, a replica of the Golden Hinde, fake skeletons in cages, and all the extraordinary sights of the South Bank, which kept Laura entertained even as she got more and more tired. Great rejoicing when we found a lost part of our gang, and gained some more to make 11 of us moving as a self-supporting group. By this time our less agile members had perfected the technique of walking ahead for a hundred yards or so, then sitting on a bench while the rest of us caught up. I dived into a shop for a welcome ready-mixed gin-and-tonic (it’s what She would have wanted), but in fact hardly felt like eating and drinking.
Everything got slower as it got dark and we got closer, fine view over Parliament but still around 3 hours for the last bit.
The last mile of zig-zags was done rapidly after midnight, as the crowd is thinned out to a single file. Scouts gave out snacks and drinks, and then took anything left over before the very cheerful security manned by police from all over the country. Then the whole group blagged our way into the step-free entrance by claiming to be family of those finding the steps difficult.
And then, at 2am, we were finally in there. I have been in Westminster Hall before, and so was prepared for how huge and impressive it was – the building itself was enough to provoke mouth-open gasps, let alone the coffin and the surrounding vigil. Then we paused to see the changing of the guard, which was a fine spectacle, although slightly distracting from the atmosphere. It was good to get back to the extraordinary silence. Our 7-year-old Laura was dog-tired, eyes open in awe, and the carefully practiced curtsey was not perfect. But she got there, and never complained.
Then after just a couple of minutes we were out in Parliament Square, sadly saying goodbye to each other. After just missing a train from Kings Cross, I resigned myself to a platform bench until 5am, but staff kindly invited us to sit in the 7am train to Edinburgh at Platform 8, provided we got out before it left.
But couldn’t sleep – just too excited after the events of the day. The whole experience reminded me strongly of doing the Camino to Santiago. Just moving along steadily, a simple existence reduced to essentials, with concern for the wonderful people you meet on the way. And with an end in sight, which is eventually achieved (after around 10 miles of queue, taking 14½ hours).
There’s been suggestions that an online pre-booking system would have been more efficient, but this seems to miss the point. It was like a pilgrimage, where the journey is just as important as the goal.