Funeral

Today was The Queen’s funeral. PY and I volunteered to be waypfinders at Vauxhall which is why I fund myself leaving the house before 6am for the second time in a week.  When we arrived we discovered that the Starbucks was open and so grabbed a drink before heading to the meeting point in St Peter’s Church on Kennington Lane. 

We had wondered what we would be doing at Vauxhall but in the end we were deployed at Lambeth Bridge.   Their bridge was closed to traffic but during the morning it was open to pedestrians and periodically closed to accommodate the movement of some of the dignitaries attending the funeral. A lot of the people attending, who did not get specific VIP escorts, came across the bridge so we saw a good number of well known faces. 

People were generally lovely. Occasionally, when the bridge was closed, some of the residents from across the water were a bit frustrated that they couldn’t get home. There were a good number of food deliveries that were not going to arrive warm at their destinations on the other side of the Thames. And there were lots of people who were trying to get closer to the funeral procession and were trying to find a bridge that was open. 

It was a very impressive police operation.  There clearly had been a lot of planning. We were stationed with a group of police officers from Scotland who were being supervised by a sergeant from the Metropolitan Police.  I think the Scottish officers were used to public responding to their ‘get off your bike and walk’ commands much faster than people in London do when confronted. And I think it was a bit of a shock for people that the police enforced their requests.