The Queen in Stockport

I happened to be in a pub in Stockport, meeting up with a few mates who I hadn't seen for a couple of years because of Covid, when the news came that the Queen had died, almost a fortnight ago now.

I knew when I left home to catch the train to Stockport that the Queen was seriously ill and that it was possible she might die in the next few hours, and wondered what would happen if she did – would the pub shut, or people sit silently over their drinks in a mournful atmosphere? – but in the end a bloke at the bar asked his mate if he thought they'd get the day off for the funeral and they laughed and things carried on pretty much as normal. Later, we walked back down the hill to the station and there were groups of people coming along Wellington Road in high spirits on an evening out, which would have been unthinkable seventy years ago I reckon.

Funnily enough, the only time I saw the Queen, quite by accident, was at Stockport station in 2004, when I was dropping some relatives off there and her train came in on the next platform - she was on her way to what was then the Royal Manchester School for the Deaf, and I to work as one of her civil servants at the social security office across the road, where, given my republican sympathies, the telling of my encounter with our employer was met with some mirth.

I'd travelled into Stockport on the train a couple of times before in the last few months, for the beer festival at the football ground and the evening at Ye Olde Vic to celebrate it having been in the Good Beer Guide for 21 years, but on both occasions had left the station by the approach on the Edgeley side, so hadn't seen the new buildings around it or the bus interchange going up in the shell of the old one.