THE QUEEN MOTHER: THE PEOPLE'S DAY: THE 3-MILE TIDE OF LOVE

IF love can be measured in miles, the affection for the Queen Mother appears to go on forever.

By dusk yesterday more than 100,000 mourners had walked slowly past her coffin in Westminster Hall with another two days of her lying in state still to go.

The thirst among ordinary men and women to say goodbye to her was simply overwhelming.

Many had queued patiently for up to seven hours in a four-deep line that snaked its way for three miles.

Throughout the night and all day yesterday the torrent never slackened.

The Hall was closed for two hours at dawn for cleaning work, then opened again at 8am, by which time around 1,000 were already queuing.

First in the queue was nanny Liz Fisher from Chiswick, West London, who arrived before dawn. Like many others, Liz was a model of determination. "I came here yesterday to pay my respects," she said. "But the queue was too long. So here I am again."

Less than two hours later, the line had stretched for a mile and a half across the river back towards Blackfriars Bridge.

By 9.45am the London Underground announcer at Westminster station was warning new arrivals that they faced an almost interminable wait. "Customers are informed," he said in Tubespeak, "that those wishing to see the Queen Mother in state will now have a delay of approximately five-and-a-half to six hours."

Nobody turned back. Sir Michael Willcocks, who as Black Rod is responsible for ceremonial and security matters at Westminster, promised that the building would stay open all night if necessary. "We are not about to disappoint the public and turn them away," he said.

By lunchtime the queue had stretched until, incredibly, it was over three miles long. This was the people's day. No set-pieces, no parades, no royalty to goggle at. Those who came did so for the simple reason that they felt compelled to be here. "I woke up this morning," John Davison, who had driven up from Hampshire told me, "and I thought, there is only one place I want to be."

At Lambeth Bridge the Thames flowed underneath a human river of love, the people patiently shuffling forward talking to the strangers next to them - a very un-British trait as they waited to remember a very British lady.

As they entered Westminster Hall, the bright glare of a chilly spring day was replaced by a half-light, with beams of weak sunshine seeping in through the high, stained-glass window. Their first glimpse of the Queen Mother's coffin was from the top of a high staircase, her Royal Standard spread out over it.

It filled the eyes, shutting out everything else. Many let out a gasp as they first caught sight of it. Slowly they descended the stairs, a waterfall of people that never stopped the whole day through.

In the Hall they found themselves enveloped in a world of peace. Even the click of shoes was stifled by a thick beige carpet.

The coffin on its catafalque drew everyone's eye, mesmerised them.

The crown, sending out shards of light from its diamonds as the sun caught it, was placed on top and the Queen Mother's Standard, in red, gold, blue and white, lay in neat folds beneath it, covering the body of a woman that everyone thought they knew, although of course they didn't. But then, of course, that was her gift. Former British heavyweight boxer Sir Henry Cooper, who arrived with his family yesterday morning, underlined her common touch. "She was just one of us, if you can say that of royalty," he said in his familiar mellow cockney tones. "She was a lovely person, a marvellous lady."

On one side of the coffin was the Queen's bouquet of white flowers, the simple card signed with her childhood nickname - "In Loving Memory, Lilibet" - and it came to you that for all her power as a symbol, the Queen Mother was also dearly loved by her family, her children and grandchildren.

On either side of the coffin, candles flickered. Four soldiers from the Welsh Guards, in their red tunics and bearskins, stood vigilantly at each corner. Their heads were inclined towards the ground as if they were racked with some unbearable sorrow, and they didn't move a muscle.

Every 20 minutes they were relieved, their replacements suddenly materialising from an ante-room and slow-marching across the carpet. The changeover was stunning to watch, like an elaborate mime show, with slow turns and much kissing of swords.

The crowd was impossible to categorise. The cynics who thought it would be entirely composed of Cardigan Man and Regimental Man and Mr And Mrs Bonkers from Epsom in their Union Jack waistcoats were made to eat their words. They came from everywhere, all ages, all walks of life. Every colour and creed in the human family seemed to be represented.

I found it incredibly moving, far more moving than if the Hall had been full of lords and ladies, uniforms and topcoats. These were your neighbours and mine, in many cases spending money to travel here that they could ill afford.

Sure, there were ex-soldiers in their blazers and regimental ties. However these were not officer types but the rank and file, who in the past had put their lives on the line for us. They mingled with people you will find on every high street. The elderly carrying the fold-up chairs they had sat on in the queue. Teenagers in Gap sports tops. Toddlers in Rupert Bear romper suits. Some people had obviously combined their visit with their normal weekend jobs, carrying their groceries with them in Tesco bags.

For some it was first and foremost a gesture of defiance. "This is to show the people who want a republic in this country that it's not going to happen," said grandmother Vera Virgo, 77, from Wandsworth, South London. "The Queen needs our support. She has had a very difficult start to the year losing her sister and now her mother."

Like most, Vera had waited for hours for what amounted on average to a 10-minute walk through the Hall, but I doubt if there was a single person there who was not affected. Some hid it better than others, that's all. The men, especially, tried to hold it back, their faces tensed and set, while beside them their wives and girlfriends, who weren't going to have any truck with such stiff-upper-lip nonsense, dabbed at their eyes with tissues.

Young and old felt the loss in exactly the same way. Rachel Wood, 13, from Winchester, is a pupil at King Edward's School in Godalming, Surrey, where the Queen Mother was president.

She said: "I met her two years ago and we chatted about the Internet. She asked me what I knew about computers. The thing I remember most about her is how easy she was to talk to. I wrote in the condolence book that I would miss her and loved her very much."

Emotion crept up on some people without warning, surprising them. I saw a girl of 12 throw her arms around her little brother, two years younger, who had suddenly burst into floods of tears. "It's the first time I've ever known him to be like that," she said afterwards, still not quite able to believe she had seen her tough little sibling in such a different light.

For many of the younger ones it was the first time they had been confronted with the physical presence of a dead person. The fact that it was the Queen Mother, whose likeness they knew from a thousand photographs, somehow made it worse. Looking at that coffin on the catafalque, the flowers and the crown, they had experienced the loneliness of death. It was something you knew they would never forget.

The coffin exerted an almost hypnotic influence. At the far end of the hall, near the exit, the crowd scrunched up, unwilling to take those last few steps back into the sunlight. Their gaze stayed riveted on where the Queen Mother lay and even when the force of numbers behind them eventually forced them into leaving, their eyes kept flicking back for a final glance, like when you are parted from a loved one.

Yesterday, for thousands, goodbye was such a hard word to say.

Copyright 2002 MGN LTD
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