One of my earliest memories is of crying at the circus when they played the national anthem.
I’d gone there with my brother and my aunties in the 1970s, when circuses still featured lion tamers and elephants and fancy ladies on dancing horses.
None of that stands out.
But I do vividly remember being part of the crowd in the big top, all of us on our feet as the music swelled over the loud speakers. And of being utterly inconsolable as it was explained to me that no, our gracious Queen would not actually be making an appearance, no matter how lustily I implored God to save her.
What can I say? It’s a great walk-on tune. Up there with the Rocky theme. And little girls love crowns and sparkles
But I never really shook that enthusiasm for the Queen. No matter how left I leaned, or how cool I tried to play it in the decades that followed.
And so while today doesn’t find me “devastated”, or “heartbroken”, or any of those other big emotions that the people on the radio are professing, I’m sad the Queen is dead.
I think I’m sad that something’s shifted.
That this person who’s been a presence in the background of all our lives for all those years is gone.
And that with her goes another link to all those times we won’t be getting back.
Memories of the Queen – and so much more
I’ve no idea what happened to my scrapbook on Princess Anne’s wedding. But I do remember kneeling at my gran’s coffee table as she helped me cut out newspaper photos of the royals in their posh frocks.
My other gran timed Christmas dinner around the Queen’s speech. She died years ago but we’ve always done it since, and it’s her I’ve thought of every year.
I still have my china mug and commemorative coin from the Queen’s silver jubilee in 1977 when they laid out trestle tables and our mums stuffed us full of sandwiches and diluting juice.
And when I grew up and became a reporter in Aberdeenshire, royal visits came with the territory.
I stood outside Crathie Kirk in the pouring rain and let Geoff Capes throw me over his shoulder at the Braemar Gathering, never forgetting to note what colour the Queen’s hat was.
And on the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s coronation in 2013, I interviewed the late Stanley Rothney, a Burma veteran and teller of tall tales, who could remember every detail of watching the ceremony on the only television in his village, and whose friendship is one of the things I cherish most from my career.
Memories of the Queen thread through all our lives
My memories of the Queen are no more profound than yours, or anyone else’s.
It’s why I didn’t take to Twitter or Facebook to join the millions expressing their condolences on Thursday afternoon.
The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.
The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/VfxpXro22W
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) September 8, 2022
And I’m listening to the royal experts on the television, growing ever more verbose in their attempts to pad out airtime, and wondering what lengths they’ll have to go to in order to fill the period of royal mourning that stretches out in front of us.
But when they talk about an “outpouring of grief” and the “fabric of the nation” I think I understand.
A thread that tied me to the things that really mattered has come loose and they feel a little further away today.
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