10:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch to watch the Queen's funeral. We're interested also to see the foreign leaders, but we realise how few of these we're going to recognise anyway Years ago there used to be several world leaders whose faces were really well known, but is this still the case?
Of course we'll recognise Biden and Macron, and Justin Trudeau; maybe even Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand. I think I may recognise Anthony Albanese, the Australian premier, but he hasn't figured much in the news over here as yet - he's still fairly new in office, and he isn't yet a familiar face, to put it mildly.
We think that in the old days there also used to be several European leaders with well-known faces: that's definitely not the case now, as far as we're concerned. Remember the good old days with Franco, Salazar, Adenauer, Ulbricht, Queen Juliana, King Baudoin of the Belgians, King Haakon of Norway etc etc? Come back, old familiar faces - all is forgiven (except in the case of Ulbricht, Franco and Salazar obviously!).
Luckily we see the foreign leaders that we do know, plus of course Liz Truss, and all the British ex-prime ministers, who enter in a group - they're probably forming close friendships with each other after all the events of the past few days!
Here's Macron...
...and the Bidens...
...and all the UK ex-Prime Ministers...
...Liz Truss.....
...Justin Trudeau...
...PM Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand...
..and PM Anthony Albanese of Australia
The other foreign leader we're looking out for is Queen Margrethe of Denmark. Lois and I take a special interest in Denmark because our daughter Alison and her family lived in Copenhagen for 6 years from 2012 to 2018.
We don't notice her, but when I check the Danish news media it seems that she got a really good seat in the Abbey, right opposite the British royals.
Reading between the lines, I can see that the Danish media are a bit puzzled but also flattered, that Queen Margrethe, along with Crown Prince Frederik, were assigned such a favourable seat for the service.
The Danish media speculate that the reason for the privileged seating was that Margrethe and Elizabeth had such a close personal relationship going back several years - they used the nicknames Lilibet and Daisy when talking or writing letters to each other. And a little-known fact is that with Elizabeth's death, Margrethe herself becomes the longest serving monarch in the world: she succeeded to the Danish throne in 1972, so 50 years ago.
11:00 We watch the funeral service, ending with the National Anthem, before having lunch.
15:00 After another nap in bed, we watch the arrival of the hearse at Windsor followed by the final service at the castle chapel. And although nobody could love or respect the late Queen Elizabeth more than Lois and I, we think it's fair to say that, at the same time, we're starting to get a touch of "funeral fatigue" by this point. Our own fault, maybe, for watching TV for too long today.
Nevertheless we're definitely starting to feel rather sorry for the Queen's children because of all the walking they're having to do behind the Queen's coffin. And we're also feeling sorry for the poor pall-bearers, carrying the coffin up and down so many treacherous steps.
Call us a couple of softies if you like!
Lois and I are starting to feel sorry for the Queen's children
and also for the pall-bearers
We wonder, however, whether Charles also is perhaps feeling that it's all been too much of an ordeal for him and his siblings? Will he take all that into account when planning his own funeral maybe?
However, I guess one of the main objectives has been to give as many ordinary people as possible the chance to see the Queen's coffin as it travels on its way to the final committal, and Lois and I respect that. And we're sure that the Queen would have approved of that too.
20:00 Lois and I settle down on the couch. We've mostly had a day off from decluttering because of the funeral. And the road outside has been eerily quiet at times, as the local press also reports:
And we wonder who that "odd person" was, who braved the streets alone. Could it have been the man Lois and I call "beenie man", for example? Well, there are plenty of peculiar characters around these days, that's for sure!
Tomorrow the decluttering and downsizing will start again, which will be a shock to the system to put it mildly. But tonight we relax with the TV watching one of our favourite TV quizzes, Only Connect, which tests lateral thinking.
And for the first time for weeks, I work out a connection that both teams just fail to get, which is nice.
Strigiformes team's answer: they all received medals for bravery.
Cryptics team's answer: they all have medals named after them.
Colin's answer: they're all crosses. The last two have a reference to medals, it's true: the George Cross and the Maltese Cross. But the first one is the Cross of Lorraine, associated with the Knights Templar and the Freemasons. And Eleanor of Castile was the wife of Edward I, and there are Eleanor Crosses, constructed at places where Eleanor's body rested overnight on the way to its burial place, which is nice and topical.
See? It's "simples", isn't it, when I explain it nice and slowly!
It's a small point, but it sends me to bed in a good mood, which is the important thing!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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