A Normal Day
Our local corner shop yesterday.
Electronic billboards across the land are displaying pictures of the Queen against a black background, making it look like we’re hosting the world’s biggest philately convention. Paddington has sent his condolences. The royal beekeeper has informed the Queen’s bees that the Queen (though presumably not their queen) has died. Even the Cromwell Museum has retweeted the local mayor’s condolences.
Any understandable sympathy one might feel for the human beings at the centre of all this is going to be stretched to the limit by this marathon of mourning. Twelve days is longer than some overseas trips.
At some point in the next day or so, Edinburgh residents will have the chance to file past the Queen’s coffin in St Giles. Given that we’re here, it would seem a missed historic opportunity not to add to the throng, and so despite having exceeded my annual royal threshold I imagine we will. Please adjust your estimates of the scale of monarchist grief accordingly.
(I’m reliably informed that “telling the bees is a tradition in many European countries in which bees would be told of important events in their keeper’s lives such as births, marriages and departures and returns in the household”. Feeding the workers’ obsession with the lives of their keepers, eh—more relevant than I thought.)
I came into the office today to see what it was looking like on the Royal Mile, which my office window overlooks. Some are already waiting behind the barriers, but it isn’t rammed yet. The procession of the Queen’s coffin from Holyrood Palace (downhill to my right) to St Giles Cathedral (uphill to my left) is due to start in two and a half hours.
There was a long row of portaloos along the cyclepath around the Meadows, which is a fair way from the action. I suppose they can’t risk them appearing in shot on TV.
I’ll bet the Council are relieved she didn’t die during the bin strike.
Added by Rory on 12 September 2022.
In the end, we couldn’t be bothered queuing for fifteen hours to file past a coffin draped in a flag. The urge to bear witness to history only goes so far.
Added by Rory on 14 September 2022.