English to the end in their finest hour

Their sergeant-majors bark orders and, like a ripple of furry dominoes from Westminster Hall down to the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, the guardsmen present arms before allowing them to flop forlornly to the floor. Their busbies nod forwards as they bow their heads. They look as if they are falling into a deep, unbreakable slumber.

Expectancy grips the crowd. Their idle conversations cease. They know the pageantry is just beginning.

At precisely 11.16am, they crane and topple forwards, fingers pointing to the right as the Royal Standard on the bonnet of a ruby-black limousine describes the Queen's arrival at the Great West Door.

Almost immediately to the left, outside Westminster Hall, a pipe band breaks into life and the crowd cranes and topples the other way, everyone growing a couple of inches. The Queen Mother is beginning her penultimate journey.

The band draws nearer, getting louder - so loud that it wakes the sergeant-majors who bark out orders and the busbies snap back to life and to attention.

The band is now upon them, spine-tingingly loud and drowning out the Tenor bell. Now the crowd cranes and topples a little more, desperate to see the brigadiers, colonels, majors and captains who flank the gun carriage.

It arrives, rolling so effortlessly through the noise left behind by the pipes and the drums, the ensign on its lid not stirring in the chill April breeze. Her Majesty's crown, with its priceless Koh-i-noor diamond sparkling brightly beneath the grey sky, sits on top of the coffin on a purple cushion, proudly marking her final progress into the abbey where, 65 years ago, it was first placed on her head.

The Royals follow in the gun carriage's wake. Behind their grand matriarch, they are the branches of the family tree she has left behind: Philip, jowly and creased and stiff with age; Charles, greying but still upright; and then William, fresh-faced and smooth-skinned.

How strange their lives must be. They troop by glumly, probably crying inside at their loss, but the crowd is now in a frenzy. There is none of the shell-shocked silence and stunned stillness which watched Princess Diana's final journey through these same streets.

Instead, there's a clatter of shutters and a push for a view - and a better picture.

"Anne, Anne, can you see Anne?" scream a gaggle of elderly women, making sure they have the complete collection of mourners stored in their memory banks and saved in their photo albums.

In a moment, the Royals are gone, lost from view behind the craning, toppling crowd and the attentive busbies.

A few people with long lenses zoom in on the coffin as it is moved, the crown on its top wobbling slightly, from the gun carriage to the bearers' shoulders, but most watchers leap from their precarious perches, from their traffic cones and signposts, from their stepladders and wrought iron fences, from their beer crates and statues of noblemen, glad to have seen their moment of history but glad, too, to be able to stretch their legs.

FOR many of them, the day had begun on the early-morning tube from the suburbs, where there were more signs of money-making than mourning. Hard-faced City men, their hair still shiny and damp from their early-morning showers, burrowed their noses deep into broadsheets. They steadfastly ignored the few mavericks who had intruded into their carriages wrapped in flags, on their way to pay their respects to the lady who filled the newspapers' pages.

On the chilly, misty streets above, there was already a push and a press of good-natured humanity squeezing into the narrow sanctuaries and vantage points around Westminster Abbey. Some were dressed in dignified black, perhaps topped off by a natty straw boater or a flamboyant flourish of a silk handkerchief from a top pocket. Most, though, were in multi-coloured motley, sensible shoes and chunky jumpers.

They were largely white, middle-aged women from Middle England, although there were plenty of tourists from abroad. There was, though, a respectable representation of all England, all colours, creeds and ages, all politely looking for the best view.

And then there was the occasional oddball, like an immaculate Scotsman with long frizzy hair down to his waist and a red tartan kilt reaching down to his knees, which had gone a pasty white with the cold.

Every TV cameraman from gantries miles around focused on him, and his Gothic wife with purple hair, to break the monotony of the same faces which had been pressed to the roadside barriers for most of the night.

"I am camping out since three o'clock," complained a female Italian student, "and I wake up and am finding that my view has gone." Sometime around dawn, British police had sneakily moved the barriers forward so those who had fallen asleep in the knowledge that they were first had woken up to find themselves last. At the very front of the throng outside Westminster Abbey, with a perfect view of the main door was Anita Atkinson, from Harperley, near Crook, County Durham. A dedicated royalist, she and Frances Ann Johnson, from Howden-le-Wear, travelled down from the North-East on Sunday, and staked their places behind the barriers at 6am on Monday.

"It was one of the best vantage points, if not the best," says Anita.

She is in the Guinness Book of Records for having the largest private collection of royal memorabilia.

"It's a bit anorakish really, just a little hobby."

Tired but exuberant, she says she would not have missed it for the world.

An extraordinary Rastafarian with long dreadlocks, snowy white beard and sunglasses entertained the crowd. He had a broom handle down his back supporting a huge picture of the Queen Mother above his head, topped off by a single red rose.

"Charles Constantine Collins pays tribute," read his homemade poster. He jumped onto a large hat box and took out a video camera. "Smile," he ordered, "You're on camera so I can take you home to Jamaica."

As the crowd beamed back at him, he told them: "Loverly, loverly, everyone's so loverly."

There was plenty of entertainment from the avuncular policemen and from swapping Royal stories. People were outbidding each other to find who had queued the longest to pay their respects - sold to the lady from Sussex who shuffled into Westminster Hall 14-and-a-half hours after she first joined the queue.

"I've never missed a Royal event here since the Queen's coronation," she says proudly, "except for Diana's funeral. I couldn't believe it when they decided to bury her at the same time as we'd organised our 40th wedding anniversary party. We'd invited 100 guests, so we had to go through with it, although everyone watched the service on the television.

"Some of my neighbours think I'm mad coming down here every time when I could watch it at home on the TV, but you miss the atmosphere."

Beside her, an Italian from Jersey, himself a veteran of every Royal wedding and funeral of the past three decades, agrees.

He had flown over specially from the Channel Islands.

"I'm no English," he says, "but I am Royal true and true. The Queen Mother was my favouritest, so like my own mother."

They perch, chatting like old friends for hours, on top of a pile of unused crash barriers, although when three young French students push in beside them making five in a space for four, they all fall about squabbling like starlings on a telephone wire.

Eventually, they eject the weakest from the vantage point, and begin cordially pointing out the famous guests entering the Abbey.

Once the procession has passed into the Abbey, the crowd noticeably thins, but still they remain five or six deep at the roadside. The service is transmitted to them via a battery of loudspeakers hung from a crane above the trees.

Many follow it on newspaper supplements thoughtfully handed out at the tube station. Others pose with police horses for pictures.

All sing the National Anthem that ends the service, its last notes the signal for them to scramble to the highest point possible.

This time, the very last time, the Queen Mother leaves in a respectful silence. The hearse glides down Broad Sanctuary, the busbies bobbing back to attention as she passes, a smattering of late applause following in her wake.

No tears, no red eyes. Just sad goodbyes. "A fitting way to say farewell," says an elderly woman. "Such a marvellous, marvellous lady," says her friend.

They start collecting their dropped souvenir supplements, although a few grab their bags and dash across Parliament Square. Like golf followers who cut across from the third green to the ninth tee as soon as the putt is sunk in the hope of getting another look at their hero's swing, they're aiming to cut through the back streets and catch a final glimpse as the hearse doubles back on itself down the Mall.

They stop in their tracks, though, when the stately pace of the Queen's ruby-black limo is greeted by dignified applause. When William and Harry roll by, there is a popstar-like acclamation, whistles and cheers, and for the Lancaster bomber, flanked by two Spitfires, lumbering overhead, there's a rapturous reception.

"I've seen my Spitfire, so I'm happy now," says PC Bob, who has been charming the women all day.

They turn from their barrier and, English to the last, pick up their litter, hoping for a bin to put it in.

PC Bob helps a well-dressed woman down from her awkward perch on the railings beside the Guildhall. "I've seen them all, the Queen, Prince Charles and the young ones," she says. "I've come from South Africa yesterday for this, and I've seen them all.

"Now where can I get a coffee? I'm freezing."

They came, they queued, they saw, they said their fond farewells. And then life began to return to normal - although, abnormally, the Royal Family finds, after the events of the last week, that their place in their subjects' hearts has been enhanced.

This was the Queen Mother's final duty and, having performed it, the televisions in the coffee shops around Westminster Abbey showed her heading for the final resting place in Windsor that she so richly deserves.