Whatever your thoughts on her life and reign, the Queen leaves big – possibly too big – shoes to fill, writes Linda Burgess.

Boris Johnson will be kicking himself. By just a few hours he missed out on what gave Tony Blair the best boot upwards in his career; a significant royal death on his watch. ‘She was the people’s queen,’ Boris could have intoned, before referring in a jocular fashion to the time he got her to jump out of a helicopter with James Bond. How long will it take him to humorously imply that Liz had bored her namesake to death? 

Over here at the far end of the world, my granddaughter Lucie, who shares with me a perverse interest in the royal family, wrote on our family What’sApp: “The original girl boss is gone…now we’re going to have to put up with the wet rag.” Lucie and I liked the girl boss. Most of us, if asked for an opinion, would admit to not giving a stuff about the rest of them, who are basically clickbait, but having a certain fondness for her. “She never put a foot wrong,” purred yet another fan from the press gallery, forgetting about Prince Andrew and a lot of other stuff. 

But it’s not time – not yet time – for the little daggers to be drawn from the top of the sock. There’s no doubt that the Queen has been extremely likeable. She’s a heart-warmer. Oh, the consistency, the steadfastness, if only life was always like this. Having her around makes us feel as if there was a time called the good old days, when your mother would put money in separate jars for groceries and power and phone. Family benefit! Boys in shorts cut down from their father’s old trousers! The nuclear bomb! Oh nostalgia, you duplicitous old bastard.

I do feel a bit sad, though unlike Mike Hosking – I only know this because a friend has just texted to tell me – unlike Mike Hosking, I haven’t cried. Oh sentimentality, dear friend of the morally corrupt. I’ve only once been up close and personal, standing for hours at the Woodville Railway station, aged five, bellowing my head off because the boy behind me had just decapitated my flag. Through snotty tears I saw the Queen flash past, standing on that little open bit at the end of the train. 

Change is terrifying, and she did it so seamlessly that you didn’t see it happening. She’s been the world’s favourite grandmother for decades, well turned out with the same reliable hairstyle, the same pleated tartan skirt, the same twinset. Never did the Queen slip her neutrally stockinged feet into the beige patent leather shoes with a spiky 4-inch heel that her grand-daughters-in-law favour. It was green wellies, loafers in the Gucci style, or, on a really posh occasion, black court shoes, which raised her just two sensible inches.  She was so groomed, right to the last.

Yet the connection between us over here and the descendants of the colonisers has become increasingly tenuous. She’d pop over here from time to time, until her children could come instead as unaccompanied minors. She was here when the train crashed at Tangiwai, before there were conspiracy theorists to make deep state links. We knew her so well and we didn’t know her at all. Hers was a curated life. Every now and then there was a little creak which showed her moving into the next square.

Things happened to her that were happening to ordinary people. Her house burnt down – well, it was a castle, full of priceless paintings, but people who lost their family albums when they left the chip pan on could empathise – and her children’s marriages almost all broke up. On the telly she admitted to having had a terrible year. She took the edge off the comment by saying it in Latin.

I feel a sort of warm sadness but I can’t pity someone who lived a long life of such privilege.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone could have the death she had, cared for by faithful retainers till the last. Fresh sheets. Quiet shoes on plush carpets, soothing voices. Warm hands. Son and heir beside the bed, Dr Finlay standing by, a bishop praying and perhaps a cellist playing softly in the dressing room.

I also feel curious about the outcome. There’ll be a lot of red and gold and well-groomed horses and weeping crowds on the telly over the next while. And then I believe there’ll be something much bigger to watch. I think Britain, its last symbol of all that is steadfast and true now gone, will implode. Brexit, plague, raging inflation and mendacious politicians couldn’t do it. But I believe this is the final straw and the poor wet rag, as my granddaughter put it, doesn’t stand a chance.