The funeral of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was one of the most memorable moments in recent British history. It was the end of an era, a moment when what was recently living memory seemed to slip out of focus and take the form of a dream that might not have happened; it was an occasion of pomp and ceremony and a profound, grateful sadness.

On television the coverage went on all day but I drifted away after a couple of hours because the reverential tone was wearing. Over on the clergy corner of Twitter, the tone was slightly less sombre. Before the funeral began, the Reverend Kate Botley had a little online sweepstake going on which hymns would be included in the funeral. “I hope we get some Wesley,” someone commented and we did. Another tweet predicted I vow to thee my country which didn’t happen but did at least seem feasible. One person, clearly favouring longer odds, picked Shine Jesus Shine and this subgroup of twitter shared a collective online smile, one that said that even in sad times there are things worth laughing about.

I can’t describe myself as a monarchist because I object to people holding positions of power for no better reason than the family they happened to be born into. To me that has always smacked against the principles of diversity and equality that I like to think we value in our society. The enormous wealth enjoyed by the royal family (their assets are estimated at being worth $28 billion) seems obscene and the idea that I should bow in front of someone because they happen to be in a particular family has always made me bristle. Indeed, I refused to bow on the one occasion I did meet a member of the Royal Family. Back in 1996 or 1997 Princess Anne presented some awards to young people for community safety initiatives they were involved in and I was given the job of taking three teenagers from York. It was at London Zoo and I was presenting these teenagers to the princess when Frank Skinner appeared outside and off they shot for his autograph.To be fair, even I thought this was short-changing the princess on the deference front.

However, the truth of the matter for me on monarchy is that I am pretty inconsistent, because I really was moved by the funeral, I liked the queen and I like the new king. My position is akin to being a vegetarian between meals – it doesn’t make a lot of sense.  On the one hand, I am cynical about the whole thing. I remember back in the late 90s when I was working with American students in London, there had been a series of failed royal marriages and with that in mind as I showed some new arrivals around the neighbourhood, I told them that whenever there was a royal wedding the Royal Mail issued commemorative stamps that you could buy in the post office, but because of the recent run of divorces it had been decided that in future the commemorative stamps would be issued with a perforation down the middle so that when it didn’t work out, you could pull them apart. At least one person believed me! 

That’s one part of me – the part-time republican who might be more persuasive if he had a convincing alternative system to suggest.  On the other hand, it is difficult not to be moved by the late queen’s extraordinary years of dutiful service and it is clear that in some ways the office of the monarch is bigger than the person who holds it. For Elizabeth, being queen meant the suppression of the self to a considerable  extent. It was duty first and self second. I was leading a service on the Sunday after the queen’s death and with this theme of duty in mind  I weirdly found myself quoting the trade union leader Peter Lee, who was also a Primitive Methodist local preacher, and he used to emphasise that the struggles he was involved in were not all about what people could  get out of society but what they could give to it. 

To the extent that the monarchy does work, perhaps it is this balance that makes it so. When service and duty to society are the dominant lived narrative, then people are grateful and charmed and inspired. That was much of the story of Queen Elizabeth II. If ever the point comes when the emphasis is more on the rights of the monarch – what they can get out of it, then the whole institution is probably sunk.

Perhaps there’s something in this for all of is. I see nothing good to report from last week’s fiscal event with its banker bonuses and tax relief for the rich so I’ll turn to the steady wisdom of the late queen instead who said:

‘Whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.”

Amen to that and rest in peace.