My sister mentioned to me that she was reading this – and I immediately had FOMO and had to download it for 99p!

The aforementioned sister and I had both done ‘The Queue’ in September 2022 to pay our respects to the late Queen. We were brought up in quite a Royalist house – so it was no surprise we wanted to do it, but it just wouldn’t timetable with our respective family commitments to do it together. I was really surprised but my non-Royalist (although not totally anti monarchy) husband really wanted to pay his respects to the Queen too – although not just for him – but for his Mum and Grandparents who are no longer here to do it themselves.

We drove down to London on the Thursday morning – and initially watched the emotional procession of the Queen’s coffin from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. We were stood – with many, many others at Horse Guards Parade – you could have heard a pin drop despite the crowds (and obviously I cried as it was so emotional with the Queen’s beloved family following the coffin on foot).

We then walked back to our hotel and had a swim and changed for dinner (where my husband had some spicy oysters which he regretted in the early hours of the following morning, and I put pyjama bottoms on under my dress to prevent chub-rub and as an extra layer) It was the first night of ‘The Queue’ – so we decided after dinner we’d see where the queue was and decide then if we’d try and wait. We started our queue across The Thames from St Paul’s Cathedral. It was the first night and so the stewards weren’t 100% sure what they were doing – and there was no signage or anything – and at 10pm they reckoned we’d be 3-4 hours. We naively believed this!

3-4 hours later we were just getting to the London Eye – and it was only at this point that we got our wristbands (on future days wristbands were given out as soon as people started queuing, which was much fairer – I *almost* got into a fight with the group in front of us, as people kept joining them – although lots of the additions gave up well before the end #lightweights).

We’d got a little queue group together with the people immediately around us. There was Gary from Portsmouth and Linda from Abergavenny who’d each travelled to London on their own. They were both in their 70s – and veterans of previous Royal ‘lying in state’ queues – although clearly this was on a much bigger scale than for anyone else historically. There was also a mother a similar age to us, with a son in his 20s and his girlfriend, and then two sisters from London, of Indian heritage, also in their early 20s, who planned to queue through the night and then head off to work! The 9 of us formed a little group – very similar to the group in the book. This seemed to be a similar tale for lots of queuers – with my sister and her husband now in a WhatsApp chat with their groupies! We bought coffees for each other, saved the spaces when people went on toilet breaks – and provided support to each other as we took it in turns to struggle both physically and mentally. I honestly am not sure I would have carried on if it wasn’t for them at 2.10am when we were opposite the Houses of Parliament by the Covid Memorial Wall when word came down the queue that we were stopping for an hour whilst there were rehearsals for the funeral in Westminster Hall. They really motivated me to stay – that section was particularly moving for Gary who’d lost his elderly mother to covid earlier in the year – so he borrowed my biro to add her name to the wall.

We finally made it across the Thames and into the grounds of the palace of Westminster at about 5am – we thought we were nearly there – until we saw the zig zags of doom. This was by far the hardest part as you wound up and down and up and down seemingly forever. And the smell from the Portaloos was DISGUSTING. I think most people found this section the toughest. But suddenly we were there, almost 10 hours of queuing and we’d made it. Walking down the steps to where the coffin – with crown jewels atop – was incredibly emotional. We were very lucky (as was my sister 48 hours later) to be at the front when it came to ‘changing of the guard’ around the coffin – and so we were able to pause that little bit longer and see more of the ceremonial procedures. And then it was over. We walked out the other side of the hall and back to reality and said goodbye to the people we’d been with for hours on end and shared an experience we would all remember forever.

So that was our queue story – and here is the blurb for the book – which is kind of the whole point of this post, I just got distracted reminiscing!

“Three strangers. Ten miles. One life-changing day…
Suzie is 69 and has been keeping a secret for most of her life. She’d do anything to have her beloved Colin with her today, of all days, but she’s hoping that the long walk ahead will be a first chapter in a new life without him.
Tim is 42 and is joining the queue out of a sense of duty. It’s for his mum, who adored the Queen, but she can’t be there. He’s lived his whole life by the book, putting facts before feelings, trying to fit in but always sticking out. Perhaps he can change that today, by becoming part of history?
Abbie is 19, desperately hungover and isn’t sure how she ended up in the queue at all. Her ‘big move’ to London hasn’t exactly gone to plan – surrounded by millions of people, she’s never felt more lonely, and her dreams feel further away than ever. Yet today, she feels closer to her queue family than she does her real one.
As the unlikely trio wind along the Thames, edging ever closer to Westminster and the Queen, it becomes clear that when they finally leave the queue their worlds will never be the same again…”

The book starts with each of the 3 main characters getting ready to head into London for The Queue – all for different reasons, and all with different levels of preparation.

The book is set on the Saturday morning – and as we’d queued earlier I wasn’t sure how accurate the descriptions were (and my sister would say she was a bit cross, as this was EXACTLY the same timespan that she was there, and she felt it differed quite a lot from fact at the start!)

There are flashbacks for each of the individuals so you can build up a back story as to how they’ve all got to the side of the Thames in September 2022. They are all incredibly different – but I would say this really was a true representation of The Queue.

It’s a gentle book, about each of the people above – and I personally felt that The Queue wasn’t really featured that heavily. It was merely a setting and not that fundamental to the book as a whole. But I do wonder how much of that is because I have my own story and experience – and perhaps I wouldn’t feel that it had been short changed if if I’d only seen this unique and historical experience on TV rather than living it?

The descriptions of London were great – and obviously I could picture each our own experiences at many of the locations – some of which I’ve included in my small selection of photos above.

It was a pleasant, inoffensive book – but sadly did not set the world on fire for me and wasn’t that memorable for me. Unlike The Queue itself – with memories that will stay with me forever.