Do you have to serve someone?

I heard the smartest conclusion about the Queen's death from a Polish barmaid in a pub

Carriages took the royal family to Westminster Abbey.

The audience received them with applause, the royal casket arrived and millions of hands were raised in the air to take pictures.

It's kind of weird that the world has kings and queens like we're part of a bad daughter series of Game of Thrones, and yet, at least Elizabeth had one advantage

Salon associate, courier and voila!

to London

09/19/2022

Monday, September 19, 2022, 7:33 p.m. Updated: 7:53 p.m.

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The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London (Photo: Dov Greenblatt)

Everyone has to serve someone.

Bob Dylan once sang about it.

It doesn't matter if you are the ambassador of France, the world champion in boxing or an editor Walla!

Celebs - everyone serves someone in the end.

It's a song about choosing between good and bad, but also a song about humility.

John Lennon didn't like it, and answered Dylan with his own song: "Serve yourself".

Not surprisingly, Lennon also returned in 1969 the title of nobility he received from the late Queen of England.

One can argue about the choice of the British people to continue serving the monarchy, about all the archaic aspects of being a "subject" in the kingdom in the twenty-first century - but today, of all days, one can also appreciate the humility and nobility of this choice.

in this service.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, explained to the British media that the organization for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II is the most complicated ever.

"It's like the preparations for the royal weddings, the 70th celebrations for the Queen and the organization of the Olympics - together," he explained.

The manager of TFL, which is responsible for public transport in London, joined him and said that today records will be broken in the number of passengers on the tube, train and buses throughout the city.

More than two million passengers flock to the same place.

It sounds like a foregone disaster.

In practice, it was just the opposite.

Nowhere was I standing more than a minute for the subway or the bus, and there was always a place to sit.

Master order.

Hundreds of thousands on their way to Queen Elizabeth's funeral today (photo: Walla! system, Amit Salonim)

It is hard not to recall such similar events in the Holy Land and make especially painful comparisons.

I remembered, for example, the day when an important rabbi was buried in Bnei Brak (not the important rabbi) and for hours it was impossible to board buses throughout Gush Dan because they were simply full of passengers and did not stop at the stations.

The Israeli answer to a multi-participant event is "don't come to the area", while the British answer is: "we're on it".

Of all the things that make despair more comfortable in London, organization and order stand out, which is the opposite of the Israeli "it will be fine".

On every street corner in London you could see a policeman in uniform.

Their role was to maintain order, and above all to be visible.

For every policeman today there are two bouncers wearing blue vests.

Each usher had three volunteers wearing orange vests.

By and large, it felt like the amount of people in charge of order was almost the same as the amount of viewers.

In the Chelsea area, many miles from the funeral, I saw a policeman directing a couple holding plastic chairs in their hands.

I asked the policeman where he was directing the people and he said with a smile: "The truth is that I don't really know. I direct them in the general direction of the park because that's where they should go. I'm a policeman, not intelligence."

Then he starts laughing.

This laugh is not uncommon.

The familiar British humor did not disappear on the morning of the royal funeral, but instead of the wit and cynicism that usually characterize this humor, this time it was expressed in a kind of existential unpleasantness.

People laugh and then look around to see if it's okay to laugh.

In the hours before the funeral it seems that everyone is trying to force a laugh.

It's a natural mechanism.

At exactly 11 o'clock, when the funeral began, all the laughter died down, and a perfect silence reigned in the area for two hours.

It turns out that hundreds of thousands of people who are silent together, in absolute silence, produce a sound no less powerful than a rock show.

There are voices that are not heard in the ears, but in the heart.

More in Walla!

Charles shed a tear, crowds in the parks: Queen Elizabeth's funeral was interrupted

To the full article

The familiar British humor has not disappeared.

A baby girl at Queen Elizabeth's funeral, today (photo: Walla! system, Amit Salonim)

I arrived quickly and without crowding on the subway to the "Green Park" station next to Buckingham Palace, and already in the announcement on the train it was said that all the viewing positions for the funeral procession are full and the ushers direct those who are now arriving to Hyde Park to watch the event on giant screens.

I approached a nice attendant and explained to her that I had to enter.

she refused.

Politely, but still refused.

I had to explain to her a bit about the British mandate, the white paper and in general about the fact that the late royal never bothered to visit the State of Israel and it would be very unfair on her part not to allow me to participate in her funeral ceremony after coming from so far away.

I may have exaggerated, but in the end the janitor actually agreed to let me in.

It's a very strange feeling sneaking into a funeral, certainly one of a woman you didn't really know, and frankly never particularly liked - and yet it was hard to ignore the strong sense of history in the air.

Britons from all over the kingdom who felt the need not only to take part in the event, but arrived already at night to take a place in the front.

These were not only obsessive "monarchs" (and there is no shortage of such).

There were also parents who brought babies to the place, grandchildren who wheeled grandmothers in wheelchairs and even a blind guy who came with his guide dog.

I take a seat close to the fence outside Buckingham Palace less than an hour before the funeral starts.

I discover people who arrived a day ahead of time to get a seat, but apparently something in Israeli life skills (I swear I didn't cut anyone in line and I didn't even hide from anyone) brought me to the right place at the right time.

A strong sense of history in the air.

The procession of Queen Elizabeth's coffin at Windsor Castle, today (Photo: Reuters)

On my side is a family from Cheshire, yes the same county after which the cat Alice in Wonderland is named.

"We planned a vacation in London anyway," the talkative mother of the family explains to me, while her husband nodded, "and as soon as we realized that we had the opportunity to see the funeral, we realized that we had to do it for ourselves and especially for the children."

The children, who seemed to be suffering and bored throughout the day, may understand in the future why they had to do it for themselves.

A couple from Sheffield tells me that they used the day off for a family reunion.

I asked if the youngest son, Charlie, was named after the king, and his mother replied in a loud voice reserved for people who drank their first beer for breakfast: "We named him that despite Prince Charles (the mistake in the original - AS) and not because of him."

The surrounding crowd erupts in rolling laughter.

God save the king, because it looks like the British might eat him alive.

got a little more applause.

Prince William (Photo: Reuters)

Black carriages lead the royal family from the palace to Westminster Abbey, where the funeral service was held.

The audience welcomes the family members with applause.

Will and Kate's vehicle gets a little more applause than Harry and Meghan's.

Prince Andrew's car gets no applause at all.

A bit exaggerated, really, you can think of what he has already done.

In Israel, they would have invited him to the Israeli national team or made him the singer of the year.

An elderly woman tells me she remembers the day Charles and Andrew were born.

I ask her if she has already gotten used to calling Charles by his new title - "The King".

She smiles and says: "I have never called the Queen by her first name, while I have called Charles Charles for more than 70 years."

So I understand that the answer is negative, I smile back at her, and she says that she is an old dog and it is impossible to teach her new tricks.

For the avoidance of doubt, this sweet old woman would take "Big Brother" in Israel for a walk.

After what seems like two hundred thousand marching bands, the royal casket finally arrives at Buckingham Palace, and all hands are in the air to film the event on phones.

Much has been written about the similarity and difference between the funeral ceremony of Elizabeth II and that of her father George VI 70 years ago, but there is no doubt that this is the biggest difference.

George's royal funeral procession was recorded by people with their eyes and hearts, Elizabeth's was seen by everyone through a screen, even people who were meters away from the coffin.

This is not criticism, this is the zeitgeist.

As you can see, the HM took about half a dozen selfies with the coffin. For one brief moment I think of Zvika Pick, and I'm devastated for him that people didn't get to take selfies at his funeral.

Left London for the last time.

Buckingham Palace during the Queen's funeral, today (photo: Walla! system, Amit Salonim)

Away from the funeral procession there is another England, and there is another London.

A two-minute subway ride can lead to the feeling of a journey between two cities.

These were the best of times, these were the worst of times, etc.

Two million tourists from all over the kingdom came to the capital to celebrate the free weekend.

The hotels are blown up and almost all the streets in the city center have become pedestrians, simply because people don't have enough space to walk on the sidewalks.

The night before the funeral I went to an intimate concert by Gary Barlow, the lead singer of the band Take Death.

The hall was mainly made up of drunk, elderly women who had come to celebrate with the idol of their youth, but as is the custom of the place, the show begins with a minute's silence in memory of the Queen.

The women's transition from laughing and drinking champagne to tender tears for a minute reminded me, in contrast, of the transition from Memorial Day to Independence Day in our country.

Maybe the British believed they could distill our pain that takes a whole day to deal with into one minute.

Not sure that's enough.

When Barlow sang "Rule The World" a song he had previously performed in front of the Queen at Buckingham Palace, he began to tear up.

I'm not sure even he understood why, but it was an exciting moment.

Music knows how to do that better than anything else.

It's possible that a salty liquid started to form in my eyes too from excitement.

I neither confirm nor deny.

It was projected on the screens as if it were a football game.

People bow their heads at a funeral, today (photo: Walla! system, Amit Salonim)

An evening later and Queen Elizabeth leaves London for the last time.

As the casket arrives at Windsor Castle, I find myself in a traditional English pub in the Soho area, which involves standing in line for (what) 20 minutes.

The funeral is shown on the screens in the pub as if it were a football game, but those present do not pay much attention to the screens and concentrate on having fun.

Finally I sit down at the bar and order a pint from the bartender Christina, originally from Poland.

I tell her that she must, like me, feel like a stranger in the midst of the British neutrality in front of the royal house.

She hesitantly agrees, but explains that she is horrified by the queen's death.

"In the end, there was a female monarch here for eight decades," she quips, "and now there will be an old white man. After him will come another white man, and after him another white man. It's as if the world lacks white men who rule things. I'm sure white men will find a way to determine the A species that is pregnant and then there will never be another queen."

I may have heard the most interesting commentary on the Queen's death from a barmaid in a pub.

And maybe that's the moral too.

It's definitely strange that there are still kings and queens in the world as if we are part of a bad daughter series of "Game of Thrones".

Personally, it makes more sense to me that there are people who open a falafel restaurant and call themselves the "Falafel King", than there are people who think that being born into a certain family makes the rest of the people in the country their subjects.

And yet, at least Elizabeth had one advantage - she was one of the strongest women in the world, and little girls could look up to her and dream big.

As a father of two daughters, I could find some comfort in that.

Upon her death, Elizabeth passed the role to a man with a dubious past, who cheated on his wife already on their honeymoon.

A man from whom you are not sure you would buy a used car is today the "King of England".

A man who got the job solely because he was born into the right family.

We have enough of those, as Cristina the barman discerned in her infinite wisdom.

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