After church today my colleague, Paul, and I went down to the River to chat to the thousands of people passing through our parish, patiently queuing for the Queen's Lying In State.
We met people from Barnsley, Dorset, Glasgow, Newark, Nottingham, Manchester, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Wight, Chicago, Brazil and Barcelona, as well as some brave north Londoners who had ventured south of the river (one lady told me proudly 'I come from the far end of the Piccadilly line')
Everyone was smiling, happy, making new friends in the crowd and over and over again we heard people say the same thing 'I just had to be there.' That impulse caused five young Americans to jump on a plane in Chicago, it did the same for a couple from Barcelona, and it was pretty much the same story from people from every corner of the UK who we met.
They had roughly another 12 hours to go but they were in good spirits as they moved slowly towards their goal
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