Name: Queue romance.
Age: Newly sprung, but short-lived.
Appearance: Like love, but also like a journey.
Isn’t love already a journey of sorts? Yes, but this was an actual 13-hour journey. On foot.
Where to? To pay one’s respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II.
And did people find love in the queue then? Is that what’s going on here? Well, that’s what everyone wanted to believe. There was one couple, Jack and Zoe, who met in line to see the Queen’s lying in state at 10.30pm on Friday, when the growing queue was already edging over the 5-mile mark.
And they hit it off? By the time they were interviewed by Channel 4 the next day, they had been together in the queue all night.
It’s not as if they had a choice. Maybe not, but as they bonded over “crisps and chat”, there was clearly a spark. Zoe called their chance meeting “a blessing in disguise”.
Any awkward moments? Apparently not. “I thought I was going to be exhausted but it’s just gone so quickly in the queue,” said Zoe.
Which left the British public rooting for them? Absolutely. As you can imagine, the news clip of the smitten couple became a bit of a viral hit.
With people making jokes about the romcom possibilities offered by this unlikely meeting? Exactly: “Queue, Actually”, “Four Queues and a Funeral”, etc.
That doesn’t really work, because there was only one queue. How about “14-Hour Queue and a Funeral”?
It’s better, except earlier you made it clear the queue was only 13 hours. This is Richard Curtis’s job, not mine.
So will Jack and Zoe meet again? They already have! The pair went to watch the Queen’s state funeral in Hyde Park together.
That’s quite a weird second date. Ah, but here is where the romance ends. It turns out that they both have long-term partners and met up just as friends.
Gutted! I know, right? “Jack is a great guy, we get on brilliantly, but we both have long-term partners – in fact, I am getting married next year. Not only that, but there’s also a 10-year age gap between Jack and I!” Zoe told the Daily Mail.
Devastating. As a nation we needed this. “It is nice to think we may have cheered people up during a period of mourning, but I am sorry for anyone who hoped that we might get together to say that it is purely platonic between us,” added Jack.
Well, hopefully another couple who met in the record-shattering queue to view a long-serving British monarch’s coffin will come forward? We’ll have to wait and see.
Do say: “And I will walk 5.1 miles, and I will walk 5.1 more …”
Don’t say: “She went to the loo and never came back, but I’ll search the kingdom until I find the girl who fits this wristband.”
