The Queen is dead, long live the King - And a visit to Cotswold

On Thursday, September 8th, 2022 around 18:30 Sarah received a text from her FSY group: The Queen has passed away. That is some big news!! Queen Elizabeth II has been the Queen for 70 years and passed away at the age of 96. That evening, we had a plumber stop by because of some leaks in our house that needed to be fixed. He came an hour later than anticipated and said that traffic has been insane, some roads had been closed and many businesses shut down because of the Queen's death.

The following days we noticed several other things happening:

With the Queen's death lots of things have been cancelled or postponed. Most sporting events and festivities have been put on hold, such as the much anticipated Napfest in our little village Naphill. It was the event of the year, but now indefinitely postponed.

The carnival was already all set up for the party and taken down without being used.

In church, the talks were about the queen to a large extent. (I actually had to teach RS that Sunday and my mind kept thinking of ways to add the Queen to my lesson!)

Several businesses and museums closed on Friday following her death. On the day of her funeral, on Monday, Sept. 19th all schools and public places will be closed. Businesses had the option of staying open or closed, but Josh knew that he would get in big trouble if he kept Rayspec open! So, yes, Rayspec will be closed as well as most businesses decided to do.

There are posters of the Queen hanging everywhere. Many businesses have a poster of the Queen in their front window. Some tube stations swapped their advertisements for the Queen's poster:

The lines at Green park to lay flowers for the Queen were up to 2 hours long! The whole park was filled with flowers and overflowed into Hyde Park.

Buckingham palace was impossible to see up close because of the masses of people. We heard that it would take 4 hours to get to the front of Buckingham palace. The Brits are very patient. The lines to any even takes from a minimum of several hours to 24 hours or more. Lines for the viewing was up to 24 hours long (500 porta potties had been set up for that!). Some people have been camping seen Wednesday to get a front row view of the funeral procession on Monday. The word is, unless you camp out you won't be able to see anything.

The Queen's colors was displayed at night, such as the lighting of tower bridge.

Talking to the ward members and neighbors we tried to get a feel for what their plans are for the funeral and their attitude towards the Queen. In general, the people we talked to have a favorite opinion of the queen, but not as favorable of King Charles III. Most of them were planning on watching the funeral on TV from home or from a pup and commented that they will see more that way than fighting the crowd. Most people we know have actually been trying to avoid going into London. Many commented that they are not royalists, and don't feel the need to attend the funeral. Sarah's classmates also talked about not being "royalists" and were not planning on attending neither, and hardly any of them even watched it on TV.

I guess we aren't royalists either, because on Monday, Sept. 19 we drove to Cotswold to go on a hike and thought that maybe we'll watch the funeral there in a pup. We made it just in time and experienced the funeral with a few locals at a Pub in Chipping Campden: