Standing crowded at the end of Whitehall, I try to see - stand tiptoe till my arches hurt. There's always someone taller in my view. The crowd jostles; not with any animosity mind you but gentle playful bobbing.
There are lorries in plain view. People climb up the back and front trying to get the same sight as the people climbed and perched on buildings. Men scream for them to get off. Others chuckle. Giggling children are held up, put on parent's shoulders. One wiggles to get down...if only they could hold up the Grandparents, the people who knew who she was.
I can feel the intake of breath, the push to see as the coffin pulls around the corner. 'I see William, I see William,' a pre-teen voice cries out. 'There it is - the coffin is rolling into view. Can you see it?' The older man with the binoculars murmurs that over me to his wife (The man who let me stand in front even though I was still too short to see.) His wife stands in front of me - us pressed into each other. She speaks past my ear. 'You can see for the both of us, dear.'
As the coffin fades from view, the crowd against the makeshift concert gates tries to push out as the rest surge forward, trying to catch a glimpse of anything. An uplifted hand of a royal perhaps? But mostly the hats of soldiers, the back of the procession, the ones no one really has any interest in. One woman grumbles, 'All I can see is a police hat - I could see those any day.'
Walking away, away from kids petting the horses of riding Bobbies, the crowds that shimmer like water to Westminster, I become another person going back to work. Now I'm a part of the laughter at - 'don't worry about the cars here. I'd worry more about the pigeons' - traffic cop humour at the edge of Trafalgar Square. A part again of the faceless who cram into the tube, breathe in the filth, and wear our sleepless nights on our faces.
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