If you start to read this blog and think, “Oh God: not another blog about the death of the Queen”, you are probably on a similar wavelength to me. We have now passed the early stages of shock and grief and moved into that strange period of time between someone dying and actually burying or cremating them. I’ve experienced that on more occasions than I care to think about this year and there comes a time when, without trying to sound too crude, you just want it out of the way. In our world, the non celebrity, no royal world, it’s just getting through it. For a major world event, which the Queen’s death is, there is a vacuum which is not often filled they way you want it to be.
Apart from the late Queen being transported from Balmoral to London, nothing much is happening. There the similarity with our lives ends. Most of us are getting on with our lives the best way we can whereas a sizeable minority are lining the route of the coffin to ‘pay tribute’ or to simply watch it go by. And as time drags, noises off penetrate the mourning. A protest against Prince Andrew, posters being waved supporting the end of the monarchy, radio phone-ins carrying arguments to fill the void. These minor skirmishes are amplified by a clickbait hungry media and the national mood changes. Why are these people protesting? Can’t they show some respect? Because it’s a free country, I think about replying, before keeping my powder dry. Just let it go, I tell myself, forgetting that I’ve already had a dig at Prince Andrew on twitter and I probably shouldn’t have.
I don’t always advocate bottling things up because I don’t think it’s good for you. Ever the contradiction, I bottle things up myself and shift the conversation onto someone else, but please, do as I say, not as I do. But for the sake of all of us, in a broken and divided country, just held together in part by the late Queen this might be a good time to let the mourning proceed to its natural end, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
I won’t be watching the funeral on TV because I don’t enjoy funerals, particularly those of people I don’t know. I have been to the funerals of some people I barely know and didn’t know at all to support those who were left behind, but there would be no sense in me staying in to watch the Queen’s. I do have feelings about it but because I respect the feelings of others, even if I don’t understand them, I see no value in engaging in any kind of debate about it. I’ll go out, perhaps for a walk, or a round of golf and a pint in the pub, assuming both are open, as I feel they should be. That’s as controversial as I’ll get.
I’d be lying if I was to say I didn’t want this to end. I am able to separate the death of the Queen from the death of loved ones and I suspect that, as with the death of Diana Spencer, that’s what a lot of this is all about. Lauren Laverne on BBC 6 Music last week said that she had lost both her parents in the last couple of years and understood how the death of the Queen would resonate with people in terms of their own losses. I think that’s right. And I’m still grieving, in my own way, over a dear friend who died only last month, and was 40 years younger than the Queen. Despite the size of the occasion, a funeral is still a funeral.
Perhaps, I’d just like things to quieten down because when this is all over the country will still be in a mess and no longer will we have a unique monarch with a steadying hand on the tiller. It’s a time for clear heads. With one or two exceptions, we’ve managed it so far. I hope we can carry on that way.
