up early...

...and to London, where I met Antony Tyler, former Master of the Catholic Writers' Guild...we had decided to go together to line the route for Lady Thatcher's funeral...

I had been in Fleet Street just a few hours earlier, leading a Catholic History Walk that finished up outside the Olde Cheshire Cheese, and thence to Waterloo station and coffee and much further talk....London had a great air of expectation...  crowd barriers were being erected and preparations made. The Walk had begun in Lincoln's Inn Fields and encompassed several hundred years of history, and it was somehow entirely natural to watch another event about to unfold in this city of the centuries...

So, this morning: we joined the crowds heading up from Blackfriars to Fleet Street, and were glad to be early as people were already lining the road and we were able to get a good place. A good spirit as the crowd swelled and swelled...people talked and swapped ideas, opinions, memories...a former soldier wearing medals, a former Wren, Londoners, people who'd travelled from much further afield...over towards Ludgate Circus a group of protesters waved placards that I couldn't read, and a shrill voice made a speech. General feeling of being British began to pervade the whole thing. A light fizzy rain drifted around a bit.

The drama began. Detachments of Royal Marines, Guards, Royal Naval ratings, marched by.  Then young guardsmen marched in to take up their positions at fixed places along the route. One could hear drumbeats etc in the distance. Guardsmen bowed their heads, then raised them and shouldered arms in unison. And then the procession came by - the coffin draped in the Union Flag, on a gun carriage, mounted officers with drawn swords, the full works....

Well, you can read about it in innumerable reports. When the service began in St Paul's, we all began to move off and into local pubs and places where we could watch on TV. We went to the Old Bell - a perfect place, everyone gathered around a well-placed  TV screen...the service all v. traditional, a touching moment when the young sweet-faced Thatcher granddaughter read very beautifully from the Scriptures with an American accent...but the best bit for us was the final hymn "I vow to thee my country" - the words were put up on the screen so a couple of us started singing and in a moment the whole pub was singing - a magnificent sound, and a truly glorious thing that I'll remember for years to come...

After the service was over people ordered drinks and food, and a young chap came over to our table to pay for our drinks ands people came up to say thank-you for getting us all singing.

And before you all write in and say this is all unimportant and why-put-it-on-a-Catholic blog, this was a bit of Britain happening.