Week 2 of the Queen's funeral with a 13 mile long queue in London to see the casket. Honestly, at this stage it might be quicker to just wheel the coffin past everyone along the South Bank but as things go it's sat on a plinth in Westminster surrounded by 4 large candles and it's therefore a shame that Ronnie Corbett is no longer alive to commentate on the proceedings. Talking about celebrities, it seems that Phillip Schofield was caught queue jumping leading for calls for him to be sacked, so I guess that's *two* old queens we won't be hearing from any time soon. Anyway, this week I thought we'd copy the Sunday newspapers and look at a timeline of her reign.


1926 - She was born and unlike you or I, the Queen had two birthdays, I'm guessing that's because she was born twice, an especially painful ordeal for her mother.
1947 - At the age of 21 She made her first overseas visit, to South Africa and to this day 21yo girls from England continue to go there on gap years and feel the needs to broadcast it to the world (via social media).
1948 - The following year she had a child, again something that seems to happen with some of those girls on gap years although to far less acclaim.
1952 - Princess Lizzy became Queen Elizabeth II and the partying led to the end of sweet rationing which had been in place since the war. Roger Bannister subsequently went on to eat a bar of chocolate and run a 4-minute mile on the sugar rush.
1960s - She had a few more children and she met the Beatles who were pop royalty. The Beatles didn't like paying tax in the UK so they actually had a lot more in common with the queen than many would imagine.
1970s - She celebrated her silver jubilee and one of the gifts was a London Underground line which on the map is grey, not silver, because the 1970s were difficult times and money for silver was hard to come by presumably.
1980s - Her children got married and longevity of those marriages was immortalised by the Government in a piece of performance art known as sinking the Belgrano. They don't call it the Royal Navy for nothing!
1992 - Windsor Castle Fire and it would be the worst example of a castle being destroyed by smoke until Roy Castle a couple of years later. The queen referred to 1992 as an 'annus horribilis' which was the same term that the coroner later used when Stuart Lubbock was fished out of Michael Barrymore's swimming pool.
1997 - Princess Diana died and a few years later the Queen Mother died, sending the Diageo share price through the floor. I remember seeing beefeaters at the Queen Mum's funeral, presumably a tribute from the gin company to a long time customer.
2005 - Prince Charles married Camilla and declined an offer by the tabloids to go on a honeymoon to Paris.
2012 - Possibly the highlight of her reign, she took part in the Olympic opening ceremony, in which she met James Bond and parachuted out of a helicopter.
2018 - This was the year she took a slight step back in her public duties, while grooming Charles to take over the role, which he now has. She therefore leaves us a world very changed and also one in which the new king is already in his latter years. Not many people get their first job in their 70s. I guess Charles will sleep soundly though that, what with the rules of homeopathy, the quality of his reign will only be greater the less of it there is. So let's raise a small tincture of wine to the new king.