Outside, looking in

Superfans enliven Windsor's day of nothing much

- Jonathan Liew

Never in its long and august history has the No 10 bus from Windsor to Staines (via Datchet and Wraysbury) received a welcome like this. Its passage secured by police escort, its progress followed by the world's media, the orange single-decker trundles regally up Windsor's high street, while onlookers crane to get a glimpse of the single pensioner within. "It's not him," one man mutters, a little superfluously.

It was that kind of a day: lots of excitement over very little, a sideshow that felt largely peripheral to the pageantry unfolding within the sealed castle grounds. “I’m afraid nothing’s going to happen, madam,” a police officer informed a woman filming a Facebook Live video as he shooed her back towards the pavement.

Of course, certain things did happen, albeit nothing of very much consequence in the grand scheme of things. People shouted things at each other. Argued over Gaza. Waved flags and brandished placards. A man in a Maga hat ate a pickled egg from the chip shop and grimaced a little. TV runners shuttled up and down Castle Hill ferrying flat whites to the onscreen talent. Drizzle drizzled.

But mainly Windsor was a sea of people watching other people watch things, simultaneously reassured by their physical proximity to the main event and dismayed by their inability to influence it. “We are ready for anything that will happen on or around the water,” said Sgt Lyn Smith, head of a joint operations marine unit between Thames Valley and Hampshire police.