A thread explaining why the miles-long queue to pay respects to the Queen is as the "greatest thing ever" has gone viral.
Queen Elizabeth II is lying in state at Westminster Hall until the state funeral on September 19. The Queen's coffin left Buckingham Palace in a solemn procession featuring King Charles and members of the royal family.
Hundreds of thousands of people will queue to file past the late monarch in a wait that could last as long as 30 hours. A popular series of Twitter posts by one user summed up the Brits as a "deeply, deeply mad people with an absolutely unshakeable need to join a queue".
People can join a huge queue, which is capped at 10 miles, to pay their respects 24-hours a day until 6am the morning of the funeral. ITV News reports the wait could last as long as 30 hours and stewards may be forced to turn mourners away.
People waiting in line are being given a coloured and numbered wristband to manage the queue. At 2.30am on Thursday, the queue was almost three miles long and stretched to London Bridge.
The Queen's coffin continues to be guarded at all hours by units from the Sovereign's Bodyguard, the Household Division or Yeoman Warders of the Tower of London.
One of the guards suddenly collapsed overnight, with nearby officials quickly rushing to his aid after he appeared to faint.
Twitter user CuriousIguana, who describes themselves as a 'thought-leader, role-model, icon', was "giddy with joy" over the queue they described as the "greatest bit of British performance art".
The thread has been liked 85,000 times and retweeted 19,000 times so far on the social media platform after being shared on Wednesday evening, reports Wales Online.
CuriousIguana tweeted: "Right, everyone. I need to be serious for a moment. Because the greatest thing that ever happened is happening right now. I don't particularly care either way about the Queen. But the queue? The Queue is a triumph of Britishness. It's incredible.
"Just to be clear: I don't mean the purpose of the queue. I don't mean the outpouring of emotion or collective grief or the event at the end and around the queue or the people in the queue. I mean, literally, the queue. The queue itself. It's like something from Douglas Adams.
"It is the motherlode of queues. It is art. It is poetry. It is the queue to end all queues. It opened earlier today and is already 2.2 miles long. They will close it if it gets to FIVE MILES. That's a queue that would take TWO HOURS TO WALK at a brisk pace.
"It is a queue that goes right through the entirety of London. It has toilets and water points and websites just for The Queue. You cannot leave The Queue. You cannot get into The Queue further down. You cannot hold places in The Queue. There are wristbands for The Queue.
"Once you join The Queue you can expect to be there for days. But you cannot have a chair and a sleeping bag. There is no sleeping in The Queue, for The Queue moves constantly and steadily, day and night. You will be shuffling along at 0.1 miles per hour for days.
"There is a YouTube channel, Twitter feed and Instagram page, each giving frequent updates about The Queue. Because the back of The Queue, naturally, keeps moving. To join The Queue requires up to the minute knowledge of where The Queue is now.
"The BBC has live coverage of The Queue on BBC One, and a Red Button service showing the front bit of The Queue. NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD JOIN THE QUEUE AND YET STILL THEY COME. "Oh, it'll only be until 6am on Thursday, we can take soup".
"And the end of the queue is a box. You will walk past the box, slowly, but for no more than a minute. Then you will exit into the London drizzle and make your way home.
"Tell me this isn't the greatest bit of British performance art that has ever happened? I'm giddy with joy. It's fantastic. We are a deeply, deeply mad people with an absolutely unshakeable need to join a queue. It's utterly glorious."
One user replied: "I am mesmerised by the queue. It's movement us a thing of beauty. How long can I be bothered to track the length of the queue? Will I last 'til Sunday?"
Another wrote: "To be just perfect there should have been two queues. Then people can worry about which one is longer and once in it fret as to whether the other one is moving faster."
A third added: "Being told it was likely to take 12 hours, we decided not to try (literal school night for one of us), but the queue cutting backwards and forwards across the Meadows like nothing I'd seen before, was incredible in its own right."
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