No one in the queue looked impatient or tetchy. Impatient Harry Mount is astonished
As someone who gets irritable being delayed for three seconds by someone pausing to look for their purse in the supermarket queue, I'm astonished by the patience of the people queueing to see the Queen lying in state.
As I biked along the length of the queue this morning, I didn't see a single tetchy person. Some chatted away. Others read their phones or their books. Some closed their eyes and took in the morning sun. No child moaned or cried; no grown-up either. I took the picture above towards the back of the queue, on the South Bank, opposite St Paul's Cathedral. The people in the picture had a wait of at least seven hours but there wasn't a single sign of despair or giving up.
Some of them looked tired and a bit cold - temperatures are dropping to nine degrees Centigrade at night. Lots of them had towels wrapped around their necks.
After biking along the queue for 20 minutes, I hopped on a train back to my warm home and had a cup of coffee, lost in admiration for them all.
