The joy of crowds
Thank God for life, and work, offline
I didn’t join the queue. I didn’t spend 15 hours on a cold pavement, waiting to pay my respects to the Queen. There were moments when I thought I’d like to. They were, I have to admit, a bit like the moments when I think it would be great to start the day with an early-morning run. Unfortunately, the feeling I have at night, after a big meal and a few glasses of wine, is not the same as the feeling I have when the alarm goes off. When the alarm goes off, what I usually think is: I think I’ll stay in bed a bit longer.
My partner had an operation on Friday and I’m currently trying not to be Nurse Ratched. It’s amazing how quickly you can go from please, please may he still be alive to not another bloody meal, surely. He’s the least demanding of patients, but hates being one. I am, I think we can both agree, not a natural nurse. Peeling off those weirdly kinky post-surgery stockings makes me feel like Jacob wrestling with the angel.
It would, in other words, have been irresponsible for me to have skipped off with a Thermos flask to join an all-night queue. Which means I can still foster the fantasy that I would have loved to have stood in a snaking mass of humanity, swapping cheery smiles with strangers and trying not to dream of sipping wine on a sofa. I can mourn the loss of those shared moments, of cold feet, aching knees, of can-you-just-hold-my-place-as-I-nip-to-the-loo. I can mourn, in fact, the loss of that shared grief.
That, for me, has been one of the most moving things about the past week or so: the shared grief. When the news broke that the Queen’s doctors were “concerned” about her health, I was sitting in Cote in St Martin’s Lane waiting to meet a friend. When she turned up, she found me sobbing.
I did a fair bit of sobbing in front of the TV on Thursday and Friday, but when I walked across Green Park towards Buckingham Palace on Saturday night, I felt what romance writers call a cocktail of emotions. For a start, I wished I hadn’t worn high heels. The park was dark, the ground was uneven and I was worried that I might scupper my first IRL press preview since before the pandemic by twisting my ankle. I wished I hadn’t worn a red cardigan over my black dress. It was nippy and I realised I wouldn’t be allowed to keep it on. I was moved to see people bringing flowers, late on a Saturday night. Most of all, I was excited. I was excited to be there, excited to be part of history.
As we talked about the Queen, against the backdrop of the Palace, I felt a surge of recognition and relief. Oh, this is what it’s like to be in a studio again, chatting to my fellow guest and the presenter. (I towered over both of them in my heels, and wished I had worn trainers.) The Sky News press preview has been online since March 2020, and there are no signs it will stop. It’s convenient. You can do it from Umbria or, I presume, Timbuktu. But it’s not half as much fun. You lose the spark, the energy, the chemistry, the thrill of doing live TV with other humans who could reach out and touch your face.
On Monday, I was back in a studio again. This time, it was The Jeremy Vine Show at Wogan House, once again talking about the Queen. I have been a guest on the show many, many times and I have been in that studio many, many times, but I’ve only been there about twice since the start of the pandemic. Again, I felt that thrill of human presence. I had a chat with Jeremy. I had a chat with Tim, the brilliant editor. I had a chat with other members of the production team, and left on a high.
By coincidence, I was back in Wogan House on Wednesday, this time to record an episode of the religious Radio 4 programme, Beyond Belief. I met an imam. It’s ages since I met an imam! We had a nice chat.
What I realised, when I did all of these things, is that there’s so much more to this grief. Yes, we mourn a woman who made an incredible promise and kept it. We mourn a woman who did her duty, with panache and a sense of fun. But we also mourn people we have known and loved and lost. Mourning has been strange these last few years. Many people couldn’t even have proper funerals. Sure, we clapped on Thursday nights, but we never had a chance to stand in a crowd and cry.
We lost other things, too and we mourn them. Most of all, we lost the precious, casual gift of human company. Life is more normal now, but for many of us there is still a calculation to be made. Will this party scupper that holiday? Or operation? Or birthday treat with a friend? Pretending the virus has disappeared hasn’t, unfortunately, made it disappear. Daily life is still a kind of (mostly not lethal, but sometimes quite debilitating) Russian roulette.
We now appear to be in a hybrid world. Some office workers still work from home. Some go into empty offices and still have meetings online. Efficient, perhaps, convenient, perhaps, but what happened to office buzz, office camaraderie, piling into the pub at the end of a tough day?
Most of my friends are former colleagues. I miss having colleagues. I miss the buzz, the jokes, the banter, the drinks. I miss the gossip. I miss the bitching. I miss the adrenalin. I miss the stress. Yes, at some level, I really do miss the stress.
The day after I was on The Jeremy Vine Show, I got a WhatsApp message from a producer. They would like me, they said, to be Jeremy’s “presenter’s friend” in the studio with him during the Queen’s funeral. When I saw it, I gasped. Years ago, at The Independent, the editor asked me if I would be the one to write the Queen’s obituary. As things turned out, he was fired, I was fired, and the Queen had the last laugh, or at least hung on for more than a decade.
I don’t think they would have asked me if I hadn’t gone into the studio. I nearly didn’t. I was waiting for a doctor to call back about the patient. When I’d finished talking to the doctor, I fired off an email saying: I think I’ll come in, after all.
And now, Mum, I know you’re not alive, but I’m sure you’d like to know that I’m helping Jeremy Vine cover the Queen’s funeral!
People, it turns out, have an awful lot more impact when you meet them in the flesh.
The Queen always said she “had to be seen to be believed”. Actually, it’s true for all of us. No screen can match the sparkle in an eye or the joy of a surreptitious grin. And on Monday, I’ll join millions in marking the departure of a woman who knew she couldn’t really do her job online.
New season of my podcast!
I’m delighted to say that I have a new season of The Art of Work starting next Friday. Guests include former VP of Twitter and bestselling writer Bruce Daisley, classicist and broadcaster Mary Beard, internationally acclaimed cellist Steven Isserlis, bestselling writer and former palliative care doctor Kathryn Mannix, TS Eliot-award-winning poet Joelle Taylor, award-winning war reporter and bestselling writer Christina Lamb, bestselling crime writer, barrister and judge Nicola Williams, winner of the Global Teacher prize Andria Zafirakou, social entrepreneur and politician Josh Babarinde and Lord Lieutenant of Greater London Sir Ken Olisa. Do listen in, do tell anyone you think might be interested, and do subscribe!
Event in Birmingham
I will be at the Birmingham Literary Festival with Kathryn Mannix on Sunday 9th October at 2.30pm, talking about “the words we cannot say: how to mourn and to listen”. I am so looking forward to meeting Kathryn IRL. Do join us if you can!
Sky News in October
I’ll be reviewing the papers on Saturday 2nd October and Saturday 15th October. Sadly, not in front of Buckingham Palace.
A great piece and, as always, beautifully written. Thank you. I agree re the mourning: there's been so much loss in the last 2.5 years that people had to deal with in isolation, which made the loss harder to take in and harder to bear. Each loss brings up other losses, whether consciously or unconsciously, and the Queen's death is touching this for many, many people. Apart from people's feelings about the Queen this moment provides a legitimate opportunity to grieve and share grief. And as well as our individual losses and loss through lockdowns and remote working, there's also all the losses and grief we've accumulated as a country over several years.
Lovely article. Couple of observations. Heels over trainers definitely. You are so right, loss doesn’t just mean we mourn the Queen, but is as much as about mourning our own lives. Be it a change in what we have accepted as the norm or for our own loved ones, gone but never forgotten. Ps I am one of those now back in the office full time, but still finding myself doing lots of online meetings.