I’m broadly accepting of the idea of a monarchy, insomuch that alternative ways of organising a country are similarly flawed and any debate required to change it would be so divisive it would make Brexit look like Paul Moody and Nigel Jemson arguing over who’s going to take a penalty. Or the other way around, I’m not sure which was more volcanic.

I think a royal family should be relatively small and live as a benign stabilising force alongside the people rather than rule over them. And, if that’s the case, then we have to accept a degree of archaic ceremony and ancient ritual when a monarch dies.

In other countries we’d admire the nonsensical rituals of ancient peoples. Ones that have been passed down through the generations. I suppose our problem is that it’s happening in a familiar place; perhaps we’d look at the carryon of an east African Shaman or South American Witch Doctor differently if we also saw them mowing their lawn and taking their books back to the library every week.

What is perhaps surprising about the last few days is the apparent lack of preparation large organisations have done. It was well known that the Queen would die, and it wouldn’t have taken much to have discussions about whether switching off the beep on self-scan tills, kicking people out of their holiday homes or advising people not to ride bikes during the funeral was an appropriate response or not.

There seems to have been a mad scramble as businesses try to reconcile their individual feelings – broadly, it’s sad, she seemed like a nice person, but life does go on – with a sense that institutionally, businesses should go into some kind of mournful rapture losing all sense of perspective.

Football loves to be at the centre of these things; we’re often reminded that the death of someone really puts the game into perspective as if we need that as a barometer to understand how sad someone dying really is.

On Friday it threw itself to the floor theatrically, cancelling all football because it couldn’t bring itself to carry on amidst such tragedy. Other less show-off sports carried on and given the Queen’s fabled pragmatism, you suspect that’s kind of what she would have wanted. Why does football always have to be the drama, erm, queen?

The club’s communications largely shut down, out of respect, so all the trials and tribulations of the season evaporated from view. When they reappeared last night it was like stumbling across a Latvian second division game; all the context – form, fitness, mood – was absent and had to be rekindled.

It didn’t take long to remember; Plymouth are a Good Club For This Division, we remain injury-plagued and lacking in a certain something. Perhaps it’s reassuring to see things carry on as they were. The game followed a familiar pattern; we’ve beefed up all over the park, but the added bulk has mostly stripped us of our attacking threat.

There’s no lack of endeavour; Marcus McGuane was excellent again, the back line looked solid, but the players who’ve helped us sparkle either sit on the margins or in the treatment room.

At half-time, Jerome Sale defaulted to his BBC training, putting aside the first half to bring in Nick Harris to reflect on the pre-match ceremony and the singing of God Save The King. 

Sale battled his instinct to tease Harris into telling us what it was like when George VI died and eventually, he found himself asking for his reflections on being at Home Park at such an momentous occasion. As it happens, Harris was watching via iFollow at home, but saved the day with a couple of long rehearsed lines about history and things being impeccably observed.

Back to the football and everything reverted to type, no lack of effort, little sign of threat. You kind of felt there would be a chance at either end just by the law of averages, and that we would concede and they wouldn’t. And so it passed.

Karl Robinson seemed to recognise the challenge; he’s using teenagers as impact players and his stars are misfiring or missing. He can’t criticise the effort, he just doesn’t have the tools. If we can push through this period, he said, then people start coming back in a week or so, and then we’ll improve. You’ve got to admire his optimism, as another great leader, Vitalstatistix from the Asterix books once said ‘Tomorrow the sky may fall on our heads, but tomorrow never comes.’