The Queen’s job was to embody us: a personalised British deity to make us preen with self-importance and pity others unlucky enough to be without queens. Her job was to be from everywhere and nowhere, as a god is: Norfolk, Deeside, Windsor, St James’s.
The photograph of a cloud that “looked just like the Queen”, taken just after her death and circulated, loved, and mocked, is not as ludicrous as it seems. We demanded that she be many things to us, so why not a cloud?
