By the time you read this, we will be three days into national mourning. There’s not a lot to say really. I did have a bit lined up about tragedy, heartbreak and outpourings of national grief. It would have been OK, I think. Even had a rainbow in it.
But it all feels a bit redundant now. Days of coverage, wall-to-wall TV stuff, acres of newsprint. I couldn’t even keep any surprising bit of trivia back – did you know she’d been to 117 countries? – because it’s all been done.
All of it. Seriously. Everything. From the ingredients of the sharpener – gin, Dubonnet, ice, lemon – that she enjoyed before lunch, to giving her pancake recipe to Eisenhower or the fact she could change a set of spark plugs.
From Thursday night on, everyone’s said everything there is to say. World leaders weighed in, of course.
Biden: “She was a great lady,” Macron: “I remember her as a friend of France”, Modi: “The world has lost a great personality.”
You can leave your tributes to Queen Elizabeth II here
Our new PM, with a subdued effort on the steps of Downing Street, the Leader of the Opposition and Ed Davey. Even the SNP’s Ian Blackford spoke of her “incomparable legacy”.
All the stars were out. Simon Cowell, Barbra Streisand, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Timmy Mallett – yeah, Timmy Mallett – wrote a weird kind of haiku that summed up the nation’s feelings complete with hashtags: “Deeply saddened/Her life well lived/Mourning Our beloved #Queen #RIP”
I liked it better, to be honest, when various random businesses came out and shared their condolences.
Domino’s put a nice thing out and so did Funky Pigeon, Poundland and Pizza Express. Greggs had a good one. Ann Summers paid their respects, so did Playmobil and Legoland Windsor. My favourite was Crystal Maze Live, the interactive experience available in Manchester and London, which extended its “deepest condolences to the Royal Family in their time of loss”.
Sweet, really. Incredible to see how many people she’d touched and that everyone, big and small, wanted to tell us how much she meant, to make some sort of mark, some record of the tragedy we were all sharing in.
You can’t really argue with people’s grief, can you?
There have been bits and pieces of bile floating about on social media but the overriding feeling is sadness. Lots of the people I follow are kind of republicans. But they were largely quiet – respectful, even.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it, I suppose? She meant different things to different people.
Some people railed against her, some people thought the whole thing should be scrapped, some people liked the woman but hated the institution.
Some people respected her, some people admired her, and some revered her.
A lot of people, in a lot of wars, fought for her. A lot of them died for her.
Different things to different people.
I can remember my mum, grandma and Auntie Win – in east Leeds, a million miles from Buckingham Palace in every sense – watching the TV fascinated about what colour hat Her Majesty would wear at some occasion or other, and whether they liked it or not.
Alien to me, like people watching the Trooping the Colour, or Sandringham, or the fuss when Brian May played the guitar on her roof. In the end it’s up to you, isn’t it?
Whatever you thought of her, someone has gone and something is lost.
She delivered a life of impeccable service and conduct, carried out with dignity, while the world unravelled.
Like during the Covid lockdown, when she summed up the situation perfectly, and gave hope and calm where there was none, saying: “Better days will return. We will be with our friends again. We will be with our families again. We will meet again.”
Perfect. That’s what she did. In the face of the torrent of progress, wars and Brexit and everything else.
Every time the country was torn apart, she was there to quietly put it back together.
There’s no one to do that now.
This weekend, the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror celebrate the life of Her Majesty the Queen with a commemorative special filled with all the key moments from Britain’s longest reigning monarch. Be sure to pick up your copy of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror to get both pullouts.
