Think of your school days, first kiss, first job, first house & day you got married…The Queen was there for all of them
LIKE many people, I struggled to get to sleep on Thursday night.
However, unlike everyone else, I wasn’t lying there thinking about the death of the Queen and how her passing means we’ve lost both the warp and the weft from our lives.
I was thinking about the early 1960s, when I was a pupil at Brodsworth primary school.
The haze of time and the wine I’d drunk meant the images were all a bit blurry.
But I do recall there was a teacher called Mrs Burrell, and that every autumn we had to take vegetables to the local church. I’m not sure why.
I also remember that I produced many paintings, all of which were so bad that my mum and dad wouldn’t even stick them on the fridge door.
I was thinking about all of this because it happened what feels like hundreds of years ago.
And yet, even then, when I wore shorts and had a side parting, a broad Yorkshire accent and could only write if I stuck my tongue out, the Queen had already been on the throne for 15 years.
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OUR CERTAINTY IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD
It gets more mind-boggling, because when I was born, into a black and white world where kids got clipped round the ear by the village bobby for scrumping apples, and everyone with a penis was a man, she was already on her second Prime Minister and her second US President.
You should try this. Think of everything that’s happened in your life. Your school days. Your first kiss. Your first job. Your first house. Your wedding. Your divorce. Your children being born. Your parents dying.
It’ll feel like you are reaching back to the beginning of the universe.
But in all that time, through everything that’s happened to you, you’ve had the same head of state. The same Queen.
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It’s hard to get our heads round this because everything else is so transient these days. Politicians. Pop stars. Everything comes and goes. Except the Queen.
And what’s truly incredible is that she never really changed.
It was pointed out this week that she never went out of fashion because she was never in it.
That is so true. And so admirable.
She didn’t see herself, as Meghan does, as a clothes horse or an advertising hoarding for people who make frocks and earrings.
She never even changed her hair. I like to think she was born with it like that. Year on year, Westminster Abbey altered more than she did.
I loved her for that, the fact that she very obviously chose her outfit to suit the prevailing weather conditions, not the latest issue of Vogue.
She was there to represent continuity, and that meant wearing the same coat for 40 years and the same shoes. Her Range Rover was even older than mine, and that’s saying something.
Sure, in recent times she allowed herself a bit of light relief. There was that fantastic moment in the Olympics opening ceremony when she was picked up from the palace by 007.
And because my mum designed the first toy Paddington Bear, I was especially touched when the Queen had tea with him in the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
But for all the rest of her 70 years on the throne she was just “The Queen”.
She was our unchanging rock. Our certainty in an uncertain world.
And now she’s gone.
Politicians. Pop stars. Everything comes and goes. Except the Queen.
We know she was 96 and we know that people die. But somehow, we always thought it would happen to her tomorrow, not today.
Which is why it’s such an enormous wrench. Far bigger than many of us thought it would be. I think, therefore, we should spend some time thinking about how she should be known in the future.
Many of Europe’s kings and queens have handles by which we remember them.
There was William the Conqueror, Rupert the Gentle, Philip the Fortunate, Henry the Fat, Ethelred the Unready, Wenceslaus the Drunkard. And in Georgia, my favourite of them all, Dave the Builder.
In his excellent eulogy, Boris Johnson suggested we should remember our Queen as Elizabeth the Great, but we’ve used that handle before, on Alfred, who was only on the throne for a miserable 28 years, not a scarcely believable 70. “Great” therefore doesn’t quite cut it.
Maybe she should be remembered as Elizabeth the Duracell Bunny. But as she did so much more than sit there, endlessly banging a drum, I think she should be known as Elizabeth the Magnificent. Because she truly was.
It’d be hard to explain her job to a Martian, or even an American. As she herself said in her Christmas broadcast in 1957: “I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice.”
Instead, she planted the odd tree and opened the odd village hall and she did a lot of waving. And she was extremely good at not looking bored when boring people were talking to her.
I only met her once, but on the few occasions when I’ve been in the same room I’ve always been mesmerised as I watched people who were about to be introduced to her.
It didn’t matter how boisterous they were in normal life, or how successful, or how many superyachts they had, they always looked knee-tremblingly nervous.
And then, after Her Majesty had flashed them a smile and shown them the twinkle in her eye, they’d always relax and embark on a boring golf club anecdote that had no beginning, middle or end. And she’d stand there, never once giving the impression that she wanted them to have a cardiac arrest.
But as she did so much more than sit there, endlessly banging a drum, I think she should be known as Elizabeth the Magnificent. Because she truly was.
She must have wanted to shout at the top of her voice: “Oh for God’s sake, you insufferable dullard, shut up”. But she never did. Ever.
And she never woke up with a hangover so bad that she couldn’t go to work.
And she never went on a weekend city break, on a whim. She never let people down.
I can’t say that. I don’t know anyone who can. Except the Queen.
It’s said her power came from God, and I don’t know about that, but I do know her sense of duty was superhuman. And that is what the Queen did for a job. She went around the country for day after day and month after month, for 70 years — 70 years! — being kind to people.
That’s what she meant, in the same 1957 Christmas message, when she said: “I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.”
She was simply promising to be kind. Always. And she always was. Which is incredible. Most of us can’t even keep a New Year’s resolution for more than four days.
She kept hers for seven decades. The woman must have had a backbone made from steel. And so what of the future, now she gone?
Well, I don’t think Charles will be a bad King — far from it. And I have high hopes for William as well.
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Because the fact of the matter is that both of them have learned the ropes from an absolute master. Almost certainly the best head of state the world has ever seen.
Goodbye, Your Majesty. And thank you.
