“Martin Amis, a British novelist, once wrote that monarchy is a holiday from rationality” John__Phipps reports from outside Buckingham Palace for 1843 magazine
eorgina Penny was on her way home from work last Thursday when she rounded the corner to see thousands of people standing in front of Buckingham Palace. The news channels had abandoned normal programming, presenters had changed into black ties and the crowd was waiting for some kind of sign that would make. As Penny looked up, a limp Union Jack was being lowered on the flagpole. Everyone fell silent.
You could use a crowd this diverse to tell any story you liked, and journalists and photographers prowled in search of the right kind of mourner. Alongside the legacy media, Tik-Tokkers with ring-lights stood under plastic umbrellas conducting interviews. I watched a couple walk past them shaking their heads. “That is pure,Yet for all the circus, there was something anticlimactic about being at the gates of Buckingham Palace.
I got chatting to a man called Martin Dove, who had been on the phone to his sister, watching rolling news coverage with the sound down, when the Queen’s death was announced. The camera was trained on the scene at the palace gates, then suddenly panned to show the flag being lowered. He said it made him go cold even to talk about it.
Martin Amis, a British novelist, once wrote that monarchy is a holiday from rationality, and there was almost a festive feeling in the air that day. Two women with corgis dressed in Union Jack neckerchiefs told me they had brought their dogs to cheer people up, but I wasn’t sure how much cheering up was needed. There were none of the crumpled faces and sobs so ubiquitous after Princess Diana died in a car crash in 1997.
Then, very distinctly, a little tremor went through the group. Across the road, onlookers were lifting their phones up. People on our side started to lift them up too. At first it looked like they were filming each other. Then the hoisted phones turned like sunflowers towards something that was coming down the road. “He’s notthe palace,” explained a man to his child. “He’s coming now in a car.” A vigorous cheer was moving down the line.
Large groups, moving in different directions down tight avenues, would come to a terse standstill when they met. People would push from the back towards the front and both sides, and people on the other side would do the same. Sometimes this would go on for 20 minutes, with no one moving. It was embarrassing to be part of such an obvious failure of collective spatial reasoning.
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