What will we remember of this past week in decades to come? For me, it’s personal

It is funny, really, that you do not get to choose what sticks in your memory. A lot has happened in the past week or two, most of it unprecedented, or at least never witnessed by anyone whose age isn’t nearing three figures.

Before yesterday’s mini-Budget took over the news cycle, there were days upon days of pomp and grandeur; there were scenes that felt like they belonged in a different century. As people have been repeating, almost like a mantra, observing the Queen’s funeral felt acutely like living through a piece of history. What will we remember in decades to come? What will we tell our younger colleagues and our grandchildren?

I worry that I will always think of my cervix. I had a smear test a few days ago, and I went in and partially undressed and lay down on the bed, legs spread and knees raised. It took a moment for the nurse to come in through the curtain and, when she did, she said: “Oh, I’ve just seen the Queen’s coffin on the telly, made me cry!”

I nearly laughed out of shock, but instead I said, “Ah well, that’s grief isn’t it, you never know when it’s going to catch up with you,” while remaining aware of my state as a faintly erotic Winnie-the-Pooh. The scene has been playing at the back of my head for days now. I can’t help it.

Another moment I keep thinking about occurred a few days earlier, hours before the Queen died. I was in my local cafe and stuck to the news; I went to get another drink and asked the barista – a lovely, camp Italian man – if he’d seen what was going on. He hadn’t, so I told him that the Queen was almost certainly on her way out. He sighed quite dramatically, paused, then went: “Oh. Okay. Well, bye, I guess.”

Further away from home, there were two videos I felt compelled to watch more than once. The first was Theresa May’s tribute to the Queen, more specifically her incredibly anodyne anecdote about dropping the cheese at a picnic. The second was King Charles losing his rag at a pen and writing the wrong date on a document.

There is obviously no way for me to know what I will think about in decades’ time, when someone brings up the events of this week, but, if I were to guess, I think these four snippets will feature quite prominently.

I have already forgotten about most of the official events; of who said what and when, what the ceremonial outfits looked like, what music was being played, and everything else. This isn’t to say that those events were not important – of course they were. I am just not sure they will stick inside my brain in the way the more mundane ones did.

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I suspect I will not be the only one in this situation. I mean, just look at the Queue. Everyone became obsessed with it last week. Some of my republican friends briefly considered joining it. I went down to see it on Thursday.

The Queue was about the Queen, but somehow, at some point, it’d mostly become about the Queue. It was silly and beautiful; everyone I talked to there had spent the day talking to everyone else around them. Sure, at some point they got to be in the same room as the coffin but, if you ask me, what they’ll remember in the end will be some inconsequential thing that happened on the way to that room.

I think that’s wonderful. Of course there will always be arch-monarchists frothing at the mere thought that the pomp wasn’t what mattered, but they will be a small minority. Small, stupid, absurd, funny human moments are important; they’re what we’re made of.

I just hope that somewhere, at some point, a kid will ask that nurse about the week the Queen died, and that she will think of me. Well, part of me, anyway.