‘Don’t You Think This Is a Bit Silly?’
Wednesday night, the eve of the eve of the eve, they’re already camping out on the Mall: they, the people, the hard-core and faintly crazed, the ones most at home in this event, the ones who understand it best.
Their bulblike tents are up against the metal railings, a couple hundred yards from Buckingham Palace, and they’re sitting in their collapsible chairs, under the gaze of benevolent police officers, with their flags and their bunting and their life-size cardboard cutouts of Charles and Camilla. They’re settling in. They’re getting ready. From a patch of untended ground across the road comes the mild night smell of cow parsley.
All very friendly. Chatting with an older man by his camp, I mention that the last time I was floating around the Mall like this, at night, was more than 25 years ago, after the death of Princess Diana. The whole place was carpeted with flowers and medieval with grief. “Oh!” he says, as if winded. “The psychic shock of that. We’ll never get over it, will we? And
