I was at The Oval cricket ground in Kennington, southwest London, on Thursday, hoping to watch the third and decisive cricket Test match between England and South Africa. Persistent showers meant the game was repeatedly delayed and, by lunchtime, it had become apparent that something very serious was happening with the Queen. By 2:30 p.m., it was clear we were in the final hours, perhaps minutes, of her reign.
There was a strange sense that this was history, a day I would always remember, in the way I remember where I was when I heard Diana had died in 1997 (drunkenly asleep under a table-tennis table on a farm in Derbyshire) or when Margaret Thatcher resigned in ’90 (crowding into Room 8 at school with everybody else because that was the only classroom with a TV). I kept looking across at the pavilion thinking what a poignant sight it would be when the flags were lowered to half-mast, and wondering how the drenched remnants of the crowd might react if an official announcement were made over the loudspeaker. As it was, play had been abandoned for the day by the time death was confirmed at around 25 past 6, and so I found out on my laptop while eating a disappointing sandwich in a café on Vauxhall Bridge.
There were plenty of other people in the café, most on laptops or phones. Everybody must have known, but nobody reacted, nobody said anything—which was when it occurred to me that a sports stadium is probably the best place to experience one of those rare moments of national unity. In fact, most moments of national unity, when there is a sense of almost everybody focused on the same event, are sporting fixtures.
