Not even the Queen is immune from the Grim Reaper's scythe

It is famously difficult for us to really, truly understand that one day we will go the way of all flesh; that as Shakespeare puts it, our little life is only a brief episode "rounded by" two immeasurably colossal sleeps. Indeed some philosophers say we are quite incapable of understanding it and never do, really.

But if someone as apparently "invincible" and "indestructible" as Her Majesty ("We all thought she was invincible", a shocked Prince William said, and "We somehow imagined she could stay with us forever - an indestructible force", a bemused Kevin Rudd wrote) has to go the way of all flesh, it is a strong hint that perhaps the same will befall all of us.

In addition to seeming indestructible, she was as well Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. If the Grim Reaper is so dutifully democratic that he even reaps the so mightily titled, what hope have we, insubstantial commoners, of escaping the equalitarian swishes of his scythe?

Your venerable columnist is that rare thing, a citizen of the Commonwealth who has known a monarch other than Queen Elizabeth II. I was an English urchin of six when King George VI died. Then I was an urchin of seven and at my infants' school in bucolic East Anglia when in June 1953, like every child in my county's school system, I was given a special Coronation edition of The New Testament Of Our Lord And Saviour Jesus Christ "to commemorate the Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II - 2 June 1953".

With a pen (perhaps even a quill, for those were the olden days) dipped in ink, the headmistress wrote my name on the sturdy little volume's dedication page. The dear book is beside me as I write this and the ink my name is written in is as eerily fresh-looking as if the memorably forbidding Miss Barrett had written it yesterday.

It is a character-building thing to contemplate a book (in this case a Good Book) from one's infancy that is so vastly better preserved than one is oneself.

The embossed gold lettering and crown on the Testament's hard black cover still have some of their original lustre. Meanwhile, though, the hands holding the little book today (what gnarled, knobbly, sunspotted, arthritis-sculpted old talons they are!) bear no resemblance to the grateful little cherub-infant hands the book was first plonked into.

One bewildering, discombobulating emotion I am feeling at the moment (surely shared by multiple millions) is affection/admiration for someone, Her Majesty, whose possession and enjoyment of breathtaking, diamond-studded privilege ought to set all the marrow in every bone in every fair-minded person's body fermenting resentfully.

"A case can certainly be made that the Queen enjoyed excessive privilege," Rebecca Mead insists in her obituary for the New Yorker.

"With no fewer than six properties across the United Kingdom, ranging from palace to castle to country estate, and a net worth estimated to be six hundred million dollars. Her favourite escape was to Balmoral Castle, which is privately owned by the Royal Family rather than being part of the Crown Estate.

"Not until the early 90s, under public pressure, did the Queen voluntarily agree to pay, like her subjects, income tax and capital-gains tax."

In 1953, seven-year-old, Coronation-excited Ian and his lower-working-class parents lived in a rented terrace house (it was gaslit, the modern miracle of electricity beyond our means) that was probably inferior to the accommodation given to each privileged gee-gee of the royal family's fleet of sleek thoroughbred racehorses.

There are Socialist bones in my body and I should be enjoying a warm inner glow of class-war righteous animosity towards Elizabeth II and her successors.

And yet, and yet ... some obsequious gene, some deferential biorhythm, some inner-commoner chanting "God bless the late Queen and her relations/And keep us in our proper stations" has me saddened by her death and looking forward to the surreal sentimental orgy of her successor's coronation.

Nobody told me there'd be confused days like these. Strange days indeed.

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