Lying-in-wait

Hats off to anyone who plans to join the queue to see the Queen lying-in-state in Westminster Hall this week.

Twenty years ago 200,000 people queued to see the Queen Mother lying-in-state and I was one of them.

I took my son, who was eight at the time, and we joined the queue on Albert Embankment close to St Thomas’ Hospital where I was born (or thought I was born - more on that later).

Very slowly, step by step, we shuffled across Lambeth Bridge and filed through Victoria Tower Gardens before entering the Palace of Westminster.

From Albert Embankment the queue was a mile long and it took two hours to reach Westminster Hall.

In contrast the queue route for the Queen’s lying-in-state will begin on Albert Embankment but will go all the way to Southwark Park, a distance of three miles.

In normal circumstances it would take approximately one hour to walk that distance but if the pace is similar to the Queen Mother’s lying-in-state one can estimate it will take something like six hours - if you join the queue at Southwark Park and it's already moving - but that’s only to Albert Embankment where there's a further two hours still to go, so eight hours at least.

This time 750,000 people are expected to stand in line but my guess is it could be even more, unless numbers are actively restricted.

After all, everyone seems to have underestimated the turn-out so far, whether it be in Balmoral, Aberdeen or Edinburgh, or last night’s ‘operational’ journey from RAF Northolt in west London to Buckingham Palace where thousands lined the route.

On this occasion however, and much as I would like to pay my respects to the Queen, I won’t be one of them.

At my age the idea of queuing for eight hours or more doesn’t appeal, however historic the occasion. Some people even started queuing yesterday morning, more than 24 hours before the lying-in-state begins at 5.00pm today.

Good luck to them and everyone else queuing up, but I think I’ve paid my respects already, even if I didn’t get out of the car.

I imagine, by the way, that the queue route will go directly past St Thomas’ Hospital.

My uncle Roy, my mother’s brother, worked at St Thomas' as a junior doctor in the Fifties and I’d always believed - and told everyone - that I was born there.

Last year however, when the subject came up, my mother insisted I was born not at St Thomas’ but at Lambeth Hospital (not to be confused with the current psychiatric hospital that bears the same name).

This was news to me but I have to assume that if anyone knows where I was born it would be my mother.

As it happens, five years after I was born Lambeth Hospital became part of the St Thomas' Hospital Group but in 1959 it was part of the Lambeth Group of hospitals so I’m not sure how the confusion arose or why I was so convinced I was born at St Thomas'.

Anyway I’ve since discovered that Lambeth Hospital closed in 1976 following the opening of a new North Wing at ... St Thomas'.

Lambeth Hospital had opened in 1922 when Renfrew Road Workhouse (opened in 1871) was merged with the neighbouring Lambeth Infirmary (founded in 1876), ‘both built and administered by the Lambeth Board of Guardians’.

But that’s another story.

Update: The BBC has announced that it will stream the Queen lying-in-state so those who want to can pay their respects virtually.

It is also being reported that 'the queue could stretch for 10 miles - with nearly seven miles of this from Lambeth Bridge to Southwark Park' which is odd because Google directions suggests the distance is 3.7 miles so goodness knows what route has been designated for the queue.

If the queue does stretch for seven miles or more my own estimate of 6-8 hours is going to be miles out (no pun intended).

If I thought the queue would be no more than two or three hours (at 3.00 in the morning, for example) I might still be tempted to go in person but the odds on that happening seem rather small at the moment.

I'll monitor (via reports) how the queue ebbs and flows over the next 48 hours before making a final decision but I do have limits and two miles (2-3 hours) is probably where I draw the line!