In one of those odd coincidences that generally pass by unnoticed, the Queen Mum's funeral procession took place in London on Tomb Sweep Day in Taiwan (5 April). I, like millions of others around the world I suspect, sat fascinated watching the pomp and circumstance, intrigued by the colour, grandness and solemnity of the whole affair.

With nothing else to occupy my thoughts, I paid attention to the details of what I was watching: Princes William and Harry walking behind the coffin as they did at their mother's funeral and I wondered what they must be feeling and thinking; Prince Charles out of step with every other participant in the procession, until someone (because it is inconceivable that he would have noticed) told him to get in line, probably his father, next to him, or William behind him, who just couldn't take it any more - "Dad ... Oi! Dad ... Left ... Right ... Left ... Right ... LEFT! ... RIGHT!"; the precision and timing of the participants (bar Charles's initial tripping up) as they slow marched to Westminster and arrived exactly as Big Ben chimed 11 and then solemnly, as if in sympathy, deeply tolled 11 times - "BONGGG ... BONGGG ... BONGGG ... ; the Queen leaving Westminster as Big Ben chimed 11:15.

Every now and then the television cameras would focus on the watching crowds, occasionally zooming in on a particular individual as the gun carriage bearing the coffin passed them by. Most, I suspect, were there to catch a glimpse of the living - the Princes, the Queen, the splendidly turned out soldiers - rather than the dead.

But then a shot appeared on the screen that took me by surprise: an old Moslem women, her head covered with a white scarf, her face lined by years of experience, her eyes sad and drooping, slowly turning to follow the carriage as it passed her. I thought that there would be no such funeral for her, this anonymous mourner who probably has every right to be borne through the streets of London on a gun carriage with a crown on her coffin.

It occurred to me that the Queen Mum's funeral was the vicarious royal funeral we would all like to give our mothers, but we have to be happy with sweeping their tombs occasionally.

6 April 2002

Dion Marc Delport

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