Voices: The Queue is not just a queue – it’s so much more than that

Ah, Britain. Ain’t it beautiful?

It is, though! Just look at it: a conga line of people winding 4 miles long, with rumours it could stretch to 10; a plethora of plastic bags and golf umbrellas and sleeping bags stretched out on the pavement and camping chairs to sit on for at least five hours – possibly 30 – but nobody minds. Nobody.

Their feet are aching, they’re wishing they wore shoes that didn’t leak, their clothes are damp because it’s drizzling (of course it’s drizzling, this is England) but – to a man – they have cagoules, of course they do, so everything is fine.

And they will go on waiting, like this, for quite possibly more than an entire day to achieve what they came for – to file briefly past the Queen’s coffin at Westminster Hall – hours and hours of build-up, over in seconds. It is a perfect dichotomy – both a once-in-a-lifetime and also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it event – yet they are patient as only the ardently loyal can be; one great, heaving, bloody gorgeous mass of humanity filled with hope and dreams and grief and honour and custard creams.

Someone’s nan has brought along some fig rolls; someone’s dad is handing out jam tarts like they’re communion wafers. And the sandwiches. The sandwiches. People are tearing them in two, these perfectly-cut triangles of ham – these Dairylea slices, bland as paper – they’re sharing them around like sweets. Everyone (and I do mean everyone) has Tupperware. Nobody, and even the thought itself seems like sacrilege, is pushing in. They queue… because they can’t not. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful in your life?

This is, truly, the best of Britain – the climax of all of those “lol” stereotypical takes on us as a people, as a nation; found in the “very British problems” tweets which are funny because they talk about things like how wound up we all get about bin day, or how panicked we become when the self-service checkout tells us to “wait for assistance”, or the way we only ever say “oh, you know, can’t complain” when someone asks us how our day was, even if it’s been objectively terrible. They’re funny because they are true.

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It’s also funny because Britain-observers the world over know some key things about us: that we like tea, that we (mostly) love the Queen, that we are brilliant at queuing. And it is true – we can be rightfully proud of this singular, achingly patriotic pastime, because queuing is what we are best at. There is absolutely no shame in that. Finally, we are being recognised for the fact that no one can do it like we can.

Of course, there’s a good reason we are queuing – when it comes to the sharp-edged experience of grief, none of us are immune. It may be a loved one, an elderly relative, a beloved pet tortoise you lost sight of in the garden years ago, once missing, presumed dead – even that actress you liked off the telly, with a sigh and a, “that’s sad” as you heard the news. For much of the country, right now, it’s the Queen.

The sadness many people are feeling is real and raw and searing. For others, the news of Elizabeth II’s passing – and this time of national mourning – is more conflicted.

But regardless of what you think of the royal family at a personal level, there is still to my mind nothing more poignant, more heartwarming, more fitting and more steadfastly, quintessentially British than the fact that this visceral experience of national mourning isn’t actually found in the goal – in walking past the Queen’s coffin (which is why everyone is there in the first place) – but in the queue itself.

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It’s meta, but it’s true: to get an insight into the proper heart of this country; to take a deep dive into who we really are – to examine our essence – we need to look past the royals and the fluffy Paddingtons and the marmalade sandwiches. We don’t really need to dwell on why people are queuing at all. We should focus only on the fact that they are, and that they love it.

We see here that the day-to-day business of grieving isn’t found at the top of the mountain but on the way up; it is in the good-natured and jolly collective camaraderie. It is in the Radio 4 vox pop I heard the other day, where Nick Robinson asked a couple of people in the queue how long they’d been friends for, and was audibly shocked – “You’re not friends? I thought you were friends!” – to which the lovely, bubbly women he was talking to replied in kind: “We weren’t, but we are now!”

And this is it, this is the beauty of this moment in history. The love for our fellow countrymen and women stretches four miles back along the river – soft as a wet wipe pulled from a packet and given to the man with egg and cress around his mouth two places in front of you. It reverberates from this great queue; the same way it does when something (anything) seismic happens – a breaking news story that rocks us, that we see played out on TV screens in the local barbers, the dry cleaners, the pub. At those times, we turn to the strangers beside us and speak to them as friends.

Aye, it’s cheesy, but I’m feeling misty-eyed. I just love, love, love a good queue.