Look carefully and you can see the royal guards rocking ever so slightly, forwards and backwards, to keep the blood flowing

My husband is - imperceptibly, infinitesimally - swaying. Backwards and forwards he goes, gently, so, so gently. Blink and you’d miss it; to all intents and purposes he is standing stock still, eyes front, unsmiling, upright. You’d only catch the tiny movement if you were looking very intently.

But then, I am looking very intently - because my husband is standing guard at the foot of the late Queen’s coffin, one of four watchers playing their part in this long vigil, the chance for the nation to pay their respects to their late beloved monarch before she is laid to rest on Monday. The rocking - forwards and backwards from the heel to the ball of the foot - keeps the blood flowing; stops him passing out. Watch really carefully and they’re all at it. 

It is just after midnight and outside, the shuffling queue of hundreds of thousands of people is making its patient way along the Thames, over Lambeth Bridge and into Victoria Tower Gardens, to stream endlessly through Westminster Hall. Inside, under the bright lights hanging from the mediaeval beams, it is silent, bar the tapping of feet, the discreet click of an official photographer’s lens and once, the wail of a baby.

Suddenly comes the bang of sword on stone, the signal for the guard to change. It is precisely 12:20am and the four on the corners swing their swords in a graceful arc in perfect time, before making their careful way down the steps of the dais on which the late Queen’s catafalque stands. 

They are ungainly as they march slowly out - their thigh-high boots, complete with spurs, are made for riding, not walking - yet still they are militarily in time, clanking unsmilingly up the stone staircase, swords still aloft, to exit stage right, like so many toddlers climbing awkwardly up to bed.

My husband tells me afterwards that all he could think of, at this point, was not to trip, fall - and become a global meme.

For all the pomp and ceremony, the clicking of heels and the raising of swords, the vigil itself is an honouring of the dead in a ceremony that would be recognised at almost any point in history, in even the smallest village in the farthest-flung corner of the earth. 

A vigil can at once be grand or simple, awe-inspiring or strangely intimate - or all of those things - and Queen Elizabeth II’s is no exception. Ignore the velvet ropes and the electric lights - and the anoraks, trainers and clutched plastic bags - and this could be a moment from another time; it is timeless.

Soothing, too; the endless river of people filing by the coffin. Most slow, some bow, others curtsey, some blow kisses. Many linger after they have passed by, reluctant to leave this sanctuary that it has taken them so long to reach. Exhaustion is etched on faces; there is the odd dazed-looking child stumbling along between its parents. 

Among this stream of awkward humanity, the officers on guard stand in marked contrast - statues, doing their duty. They have been practicing all week: their entrances and exits, their synchronised sword drills run through at home in spare half hours with umbrellas. Standing orders have been dusted off, breastplates refitted, helmets adjusted, boots polished. I have seen the pomp and ceremony hundreds of times, yet never carried out so silently; there is no shouting of orders in here.

The sword bangs once more; it is time to leave. On top of the coffin, the Black Prince’s Ruby suddenly flashes red. I pause, bow my head, say a prayer of thanks - for Her Majesty's life, but also, in her death, to have been able to see this, to watch my husband carry out this enormous honour.

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