I wasn’t panic queueing, or writing about queuing, or queuing with “the girls”, or any of the other myriad reasons others have assumed people pick to shuffle in line for hours – and hours – to gaze at a wooden box and a scene many believe belongs to centuries long gone for a scant handful of minutes.

I wasn’t even planning to go, not really. I expect I was scathing about the very notion earlier in the week. All that time, for what? And what would that say about me? About my views on the monarchy? About my thoughts on the empire, or the cost of living crisis, or dodgy Prince Andrew, or all the corollaries people draw from someone who makes the simple decision to stand in that line, of all lines. 

And I certainly wasn’t queueing because I was British, an identity I’ve never grasped with both hands, something I’ve always ascribed to being born in Thailand and spending my childhood in Singapore, but maybe it goes deeper than that. Perhaps it’s my Welsh roots, or perhaps I just want to think it might be after watching a gentle but impassioned Michael Sheen interrogate the former Prince of Wales’s decision to pick Owen Glyndwr day for his first visit to Wales on 16 September. 

I’m not even assuming anyone cares why I went but I wanted to write this for my aunt in Canberra and my mum in Walmer, who would both have loved to visit Westminster Hall but couldn’t. And for the one person on Twitter who said “please do” write something. (It was almost funny how many people assumed I’d only gone to write about it. “Both of my sons would have you down as anti-monarchist, a friend messaged me last night.”) 

I was there for my mum and her sister. Or at least that’s what I told people in the queue when they asked. It was why I took so many photos to document my (lack of) progress; not of people queuing, but the views along the queue, and what views! Tower Bridge by night; dawn over the Thames; St Paul’s Cathedral peeking out behind the wobbly bridge; St Paul’s Cathedral directly across the river; St Paul’s Cathedral still there: at one very long point it felt as if we’d never not be able to see St Paul’s, as we stood, barely inching our way to Blackfriars Bridge as night gave way to dawn gave way to mourning. Sorry, morning. Four hours, it took, from London Bridge to the other side of Blackfriars, time that both stood as still as us and passed as quickly as the river eddying towards its source as the tide rushed in. 

But I was also there because I wanted to be. You don’t set your alarm at 3.10am unless there’s something you want (or need) to do. I think I partly went because I relished the thought of a day with nothing more to do than edge my way along one of the most picturesque walks in all of Britain, a day with an achievable goal, not to mention a day with no one asking or expecting anything else of me. Oddly I can now see the appeal of a monastic life. 

I had thought about persuading friends to come but figured they’d be too busy with children or work or they wouldn’t be interested. I did try to convince my mum to come, but she felt it would be too much. I was fine going alone, anyway. Much easier, I figured. Plus I had a new William Boyd, some headphones and my diary. I’d hoped getting there at 4am would mean I’d be done by 1pm or so and certainly in time to pick my seven-year-old up from her Bermondsey school at 3.30pm. (That was another reason I went. Because of Bermondsey. Because when you’ve lived somewhere for almost 20 years, and something so big happens almost at the end of your road (former road, now, but still), it felt wrong to ignore it.)

In the end, it was 15:54 when I walked into Westminster Hall, and 16:04 when I walked out, the lengthy ten minutes due to a fortuitous guard change, picking the slower moving line right next to the coffin, and some advice from an Essex copper just before we went in: “Take your time. Don’t let anyone rush you in there.” 

I say “we” because by 4pm, or in fact long before, my solo trip had turned into exactly the sort of group experience I’d read about in other pieces, which meant into exactly the sort of experience I hadn’t been seeking, what with packing my book and headphones. But at about 4.10am, still pushing my bike while I looked for somewhere to lock it, when the flowing queue of walkers became The Queue Proper, I fell into conversation with a man who’d caught a train at 2ish from Guildford. I spent the next 12 hours chatting bikes, caring for parents, and more to him on and off and am still sad we got separated after leaving Westminster Hall so I couldn’t say a proper goodbye. 

Behind us, a quartet was chatting volubly about musicals, adrenaline kicks, school trips, and more and it wasn’t long before our duo became six. The foursome were two guys who’d got the train from Leeds and a mum and her son, Emma and Joey, who is 33 on Monday of all days, who were originally from Rotherhithe but now she lives in Chislehurst. They’d joined forces with the Leeds two at Southwark Park, where the DCMS was sending people to join The Queue, except at 3.30am the line didn’t really start there, which meant a lot of business for Uber drivers. Ahead of us was another quartet: two couples who’d met on the platform at Basingstoke as they waited for a train into London. One couple had driven from Dorset for the fast train to London. The wives had got chatting and – naturally – they had the same destination in mind, so more cab sharing had followed. 

Just behind the original four was Ethan, originally from Suffolk who had lived for a bit in South Bermondsey and now lived in Loughborough Junction. He started chatting to me about journalism: he’d studied it at Sheffield but now works in recruitment for the same reasons I’m writing this without a commission, I guess. His friends thought him a bit nuts for coming, but he was there for his parents. As was Rotherhithe Emma, whose mum passed away about six years ago and whose birthday would also have been on Monday, and my original friend from Guildford. 

By now I was feeling worried about anyone not in our gang in case they felt left out. When one of the Basingstoke train crew asked two women (who looked like sisters) to take a “group” photo, I felt a bit rude, but by the next pic (with a Houses of Parliament backdrop), they were firmly ensconced, although looking back at it I notice that the final group member, a softly spoken man who lived in Southampton, still wasn’t. 

Every time one of the security guards manning the queue needed to pause the flow, when the path narrowed or crossed a road, we’d check to make sure everyone was with us. “Are you a family?” one asked. No, we were the 4 ‘clockers, someone answered. When I went missing outside the National Theatre when I popped to lock up my bike and overestimated how far the line had shuffled while I was gone, someone asked Rotherhithe Emma why she didn’t give me a ring. “I don’t know her,” was the answer. When we were reunited, one of the musical fans, Dad from Leeds (they’d squeezed in Mary Poppins before grabbing a few hours sleep the previous evening), told me he’d sent me a message on Twitter. “#FindSusie is trending,” he’d laughed.   The funny thing was, I’d walked so far up the queue to look for everyone, I could have saved myself a couple of hours but I’d have felt too guilty about bailing on my friends. 

I don’t really know how the hours passed or where they went. It was better not to keep checking and much better not to keep asking the stewards how long it would be from whichever point we’d edged our way towards. “I’ve waited five minutes in a queue for a cup of tea; I’m not cut out for The Big One,” someone tweeted on Saturday morning. But it wasn’t like that. Time did something weird that strange day I spent on the banks of the Thames. 

We all discussed queueing, of course, which I now know more about after The Times did one of those history dives newspapers love. “The word queue was used in 16th-century English heraldry to mean ‘the tail of a beast’,” I read. “Appropriately enough though, the noun queue had to wait some time before it became a verb,” wrote the journalist, who also found a good nugget in the Online Etymology Dictionary about how the first use in the sense we know now did not emerge until 1918, when The Congregationalist and Advance journal observed: “‘Queueing’ had really become an equivalent for sport with some working-class women. It afforded an occasion and an opportunity for gossip.” And another snipped about how Winston Churchill coined the term “Queutopia” to describe lands under socialist rule. 

A different journalist earlier in the week had missed the chance for “queutopia” when she described The Queue as “queue utopia”, what with the wristbands, and kindness, not forgetting the banks of Portaloos, which portended grimness but were totally fine, doubtless helped by the extreme kindness of notably The Globe theatre to open its toilets before 6am to queuers in need. (I will be buying an expensive ticket to one of their next shows, and I hope many others will too.) I’m now wondering how queuers managed in 1952 to view George IV. I guess by not drinking endless coffee or, as I saw later in the day, pints of beer and glasses of wine? 

Along with the Globe loos, and the free hot drinks being handed out courtesy of WPP outside Sea Containers House (thank you), a special mention must go to the reams of policemen been drafted in from all over the UK. Especially a very cheery chap from Nottingham, whose job it was to patrol the line between London and Blackfriars Bridges. “I did 27,000 steps yesterday and I’m aiming to beat that today,” he said at 8am. Later, he told us he’d been watching everyone’s faces flagging at their lack of progress, so he’d been trying to make us feel better. We were mainly fascinated by his t-shirt; it was nippy, where was his jacket? “Ours are yellow so we’re not allowed to wear them because we have to look the same as the Met,” was apparently the reason. The visiting coppers had spotted a pile of spare Met jackets somewhere but they weren’t allowed to borrow them. NB: I haven’t double sourced this, but all the visitors were in short sleeves and they did look chilly, not that they were bitching. And sure, we missed Charles and William, who popped up on Saturday, but I wasn’t there for them, so *shrug*.  

It was 12.45pm by the time we made it to Victoria Tower Gardens, the park outside the Houses of Parliament and the last but biggest hurdle. We knew the line would snake, and that it would take a while, but we felt so near it didn’t really matter by then. Yes, I’d make it for school pick up, I messaged, hopeful we’d be through by 2.30pm or so. How wrong I was, not that it mattered luckily. 

We didn’t know, then, that under a dark blue Kangol-esque hat, David Beckham was just ahead of us, scoffing Pringles and doughnuts, with his own group of Q friends. Not that we needed him but I’d be lying if I said I’m not curious to see who’d come with. Did he rustle up some mates, or pack a book, I wonder? For the record, I didn’t eat Pringles, but did have: one small pack of oat cakes, one apple, one orange, one Nature Valley bar, one mini Twix courtesy of my Guildford pal, and three extra strong mints from one of the Dorset Two.

Like Beckham, my back ached like hell. “That’s what everyone has been complaining about,” smiled one of the people in a “Faith” hi-vis vest as we neared the front. (Faith that we’d ever make it? Or was she trying to sign up new subscribers?) I taught a few people the pilates roll down that my pilates teaching friend taught me. (The one piece people needed to have written about the queue was one about the exercises needed to survive it.) But backs mend and queues end, even this one. 

Stepping into Westminster Hall, with that motionless tableau centre stage, felt like stepping into an Old Masters painting. And yes, like stepping into history. I am, I think, anti-monarchist, especially in our new Carolean (?) era, but I was pro-Elizebeth, and that’s why I, along with hundreds of thousands of others, were there and are still there despite warnings of 24 hour waits and cold overnight temperatures. 

As I walked back, along the South Bank, to retrieve my bike, I couldn’t help talking to some of the people standing where I’d been six hours earlier. I’m not sure you really want me to tell you how much longer it took me from here, I told them, but I just want to say it’s worth it. And it was. Even if, despite writing this, it’s hard to explain why I’d been queuing. I only hope my own kids don’t feel the need to line up to honour me when Charles or William coughs it.