The Queen. I’d never met her, though she seemed like a nice old lady; the kind of granny who’d sneak you a toffee. Not any longer – she died today. Of course, there are more opinions about monarchy and history than years in her record-breaking reign. Right, wrong, royal? Who knows? But on my way home strangers talked to me ‘had I heard?’, ‘did I know?’, ‘how sad’. I watched as others checked their phones, stopped, looked again, recognised a change in the landscape and felt the need to speak it, to make it true. Head of State, our common denominator.
