THE LONG ROAD TO WINDSOR

I guess I should reflect on the day, here at the end, with my portion of microwaved shepherds pie.

The news is on, recounting the events - the procession from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey; the London streets - forty, fifty people deep, sombrely watching; the three thousand members of the armed services who marched, and rode, and played, and the beautiful, bold service of faith and thanksgiving.

Then the long road to Windsor: the Queen’s home, so poignantly close and familiar. We watched it all, especially closely when the orb, the crown and sceptre were removed from the royal-standard-draped coffin, and placed on the altar. Those symbols of state and authority glittered with rainbow light, returned symbolically to God.

It was an emotive day. I understand why we need days like this, though they can be uncomfortable. Grief needs working through, even when that working is in the magnificence of British ceremony as seen today in the September sunlight, or the tenderness of a family who’ve lost their grandmother, or the nation who, as one weepy TV presenter put it, have been cloaked in a veil of sorrow.

At the end of the Windsor service, the trumpets fanfared through St George’s Chapel, and the National Anthem rolled into song. The camera lasered in on the new King, steely-eyed, braided and clutching his sword above his uniform.

He looked broken. Every voice around him was singing ‘God Save the King’ but his tired eyes and quivering lips were holding in something only he could know - perhaps that this was all somehow wrong, an anxiety dream of grief and terrible duty - it should be God save the ‘Queen’, I’m the Prince of Wales; perhaps he just missed his Mum, knowing that she would have been the only other person who could have known the burden and how to carry it.

Or it might have been the sudden realisation that his life of Highgrove, Poundbury and the Duchy of Cornwall really was over. Stuffy Buckingham Palace awaits, and this will be the rest of his days. Is that it? Like us, is he grieving for his old way of life alongside losing his mother? Or perhaps his mind was fast-forwarding to this moment, this destiny, this ceremony of his own.

I found today cathartic but deeply sad. The new world will be so different and so difficult to navigate. It’s true that the old world passes with Elizabeth II, but it’s good to remember that there is actually a constant that carries us, and Charles, into the new.

And that constant has far more to do with the orb, sceptre, and crown, and why they are where they currently are - given back to God, in whom power, glory, and authority rest. The Queen knew that. I think Charles will need to know it too.