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 conveyed within. “It’s not him,” one man mutters, a little superfluously.
It was that kind of a day on the banks of the Thames: 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 from the kerb as he shooed her a safe distance back towards the pavement.
