Miles of mourners form orderly queue to say goodbye to Queen

Bloomberg

In the oldest part of Parliament, Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin lies guarded by iconic ‘Beefeaters’ and other members of Britain’s military elite —the silence in cavernous Westminster Hall broken only by the sound of metal and boot on stone when the watch changes at 20-minute intervals.
On either side, people in T-shirts and jeans, or work suits, or shorts and sandals, babies in prams and adults in wheelchairs, move slowly past the catafalque. There’s bowing and quiet tears as they offer their respects. The death of the country’s longest serving monarch has been followed by days of backward-looking pageantry mixed with soul-searching about the future, as Britain confronts an economic crisis and uncertainty about its place in the world after Brexit.
But in what might be London’s biggest ever queue, which on Thursday snaked almost four miles out of Westminster and along the bank of the Thames river, there is a more optimistic narrative. There are hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life, prepared to queue for hours — many overnight — for a glimpse of the late Queen lying-in-state.
They gather in groups of two or three, stop-starting and sometimes even power-walking as gaps appear, and there are moments of excitement when marshals hand out bright pink wristbands that signify the goal is getting nearer.
The ad hoc ritual was “one of the most moving parts of the week,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said in a televised BBC interview at the scene.

Long Course
The government laid out a route of about 10 miles (16 kilometers), including zig-zags, to accommodate queuers over four days, before the Westminster Hall is closed to the public hours before the state funeral on Monday.
Those joining the line since it opened Wednesday were not put off by warnings, yet to materialize, that they may have to wait up to 30 hours.
“We’re British, so of course we know how to queue,” said Shermaine, who traveled up from Dorset in southwest England. She and her friend, Amanda, who also asked not to give her surname, commented on how cheerful the mood was.
Others spoke of a great coming together, a feeling of unity and a collective experience that was uplifting even at a time of national loss.

‘Moving’
On social media, the queue has become known as the “other Elizabeth Line,” a play on the name of the cross-London train line that opened just months ago.
That Britons love queuing is something of a cliche, but various studies have shown that people take etiquette seriously. One by University College of London professor Adrian Furnham found that British queuers see skipping the line as the ultimate faux pas, and that spacing less than six inches can cause anxiety.