FRANCES WHITING

“She keeps showing up. Smiling. Waving. Carrying on”

Ihave met the Queen a couple of times at her house (Buckingham), and as a longtime republican, both times I was surprised at how nervous I felt. Not perhaps as surprised as you are to hear that I was hanging about BP (due to some kind invitations from an old friend of my father’s who worked there) as we insiders call it, but surprised nonetheless.

Anyway, I suspect most people feel a bit odd when they meet the Queen, and I think it’s because she looks so familiar; after all most of us have spent years licking the back of her head every time we address an envelope.

Then there are those of us who spent their early school years dutifully singing to God every morning to please save her.

Exactly what we saving her from was never made clear, but with the benefit of the passing years, I think perhaps Fergie.

All of which is to say that so familiar a figure is she that when she is suddenly before you, resplendent in some sort of lavender, it’s a little disconcerting, like meeting an old friend in the street who you haven’t seen in years, and are not quite sure what to talk about.

I didn’t let that stop me, however, from enjoying a largely one-way conversation with Her Majesty, wherein I regaled her – both times – with a fascinating account of the weather in Australia, which I duly reported as “changeable”.

Both times I was in a long line to meet her, and both times she smiled sweetly, pretended to be listening, and then moved off at a surprisingly fast clip for someone wearing all that jewellery on her head.

And here’s the thing about Queen Elizabeth, now 95 years old and in her 70th year of reign. Can you imagine how many such conversations she’s endured? How many ribbon cuttings? Plaque unveilings? Train station openings? Royal Command Performances where in 2013, for example she sat through “Ashleigh and Pudsey; Musical Canine Freestyle”.

And yet, she keeps showing up. Smiling. Waving. Carrying on.

And that is why I suspect so many people, including me, who do not particularly admire the royal family, admire her.

I like the way she takes the job seriously, the way she juggles, like so many women, work and family.

The way she sends secret, covert messages via the photo frames on the table next to her when she delivers her annual Christmas message.

If you are not on that table – hello Harry and Meghan – then suffice to say you are In For It later at Sandringham. I like the way she has tricky relatives (like the rest of us) but keeps turning up for them (like the rest of us).

There she is, over the years, smiling bravely beside her son Charles in photos after he confessed that he’d quite like to be a tampon.

Or when her daughter Anne stopped smiling at anybody in 1986.

Or when that American woman came along and blew the whole show up. Not that American woman, the other one.

Or when her husband of 73 years died and she was visibly wounded. All of which is to say that reports of her declining health recently have reminded me that, as familiar as she is, there will be a time when she is no longer with us. And I suspect that we will be surprised then too, at how much we miss her.