LONDON — Britain is officially in mourning for Queen Elizabeth II.

As her coffin made its way from royal holiday home Balmoral Castle to the Scottish capital Edinburgh, where it will remain until it’s transported to London ahead of the funeral, throngs of people lined the route to pay their respects along the six-hour ceremonial journey.

The gates of Buckingham Palace and other royal sites are stacked with floral tributes from a devastated public.

As these scenes play out on social media and TV – where the BBC’s presenters are wearing black – life is going on as normal in many parts of the country.

“It’s sad and everything, but stopping everything? That’s a luxury,” said Al Mohamed, street cleaner in north London, looking down at a spray of broken beer bottles on the sidewalk. “Can’t judge people for having fun or paying their respects to her. But someone has to clean it up.”

The British government published guidance on Friday, as news of the queen’s death sunk in, for how businesses and public services could best pay their respects.

“National Mourning is a period of time for reflection in response to the demise of the Sovereign,” it read. “Nevertheless, mourning is very personal and we anticipate individuals, families, communities and organizations may want to mark Her Majesty’s demise in their own way.”

In that vein, Fortnum & Mason stopped its clock. The Premier League is canceled. A planned labor strike was called off.

But for the most part, pubs and restaurants are still open – a necessity as British businesses reckon with a growing cost-of-living crisis. For some businesses, going dark for the mourning period could mean the difference between survival and closure.

In a letter to the government last month, the British Beer and Pub Association had already said that mass job losses were inevitable in the absence of help for an industry that employs 940,000 people. “With the pandemic, it’s already been a tough time,” said Dev Maritz, 39, behind the bar at the red-and-white tiled Thornhill Arms. “I don’t think the owner has thought about closing.”

Bar staff in several pubs said that the cancellation of Premier League soccer matches had affected footfall, but that in many cases, new customers had also joined regulars at the bar to raise a glass to the late queen.

“I think people also wanted to come in to celebrate together,” Maritz said. “We need to carry on, we need to keep making money, but while we celebrate her life.”

In some cases, the decision to cancel events like the soccer or the annual Proms concert have sparked criticism precisely because they close off an avenue for communal remembrance.

“In many cases, it isn’t the monarchy or its government that’s cancelled these things. The BBC, Premier League, and other businesses and organisations have taken the decision,” the News Statesman reported. “Possibly this is because they think it is right; sometimes, though, it’s surely because they are afraid of the consequences of not cancelling.”

The media is another space in which deference to the mourning period has sparked discomfort, as regular news coverage and television programming has been eclipsed with wall-to-wall updates on King Charles III’s accession.

Stories about the war in Ukraine reaching a critical new phase, or about flood waters leaving a third of Pakistan’s habitable land under water, are far from the headlines.

The BBC and ITV have canceled some of their flagship programming in favor of news and analysis about the royal transition. Apple News’s algorithm is turning up a solid stream of stories about what comes next.

Scanning the newspapers at his local supermarket, Pat Simmons, a former postman, was incredulous. “Nothing else happening, eh?” he called to the cashier with a wry smile. “It’s like we’ve been removed from the world for a few days.”

For the state broadcaster, the death of the queen has left news executives with a tricky balancing act. “It needs to act as the national broadcaster and commemorate the Queen, while also ensuring it doesn’t overwhelm audiences so much they switch off altogether,” wrote media reporter Jim Waterson this week in the Guardian.

When Princess Diana died in a high speed car crash 25 years ago, most television channels had also pivoted fast to following coverage. But Britain’s media landscape today is much changed. “Back then, there were only a handful of television channels and it was easy to enforce the same mood around the nation. Now, with endless streaming options and catchup services, it is easy for viewers to go to Netflix or TikTok if they tire of television news updates,” Waterson wrote.

When the queen’s husband Prince Philip died last year, the BBC had to remove an online form for reader feedback, after wall-to-wall coverage again replaced usual programming, resulting in a surge of complaints.

The adulation surrounding the queen’s legacy has also prompted discomfort among Britons who fear that the fanfare could drown out any collective reflection on how the nation’s colonial history has shaped the world.

“Bombarding us with hours of repetitive rolling content that breezes past the colonial legacy of Queen Elizabeth’s reign is counterproductive and unnecessary,” online and print magazine gal-dem wrote on its Twitter account.

In the days following the queen’s death, campaigners and politicians from former colonies in the Caribbean have renewed calls to remove the monarch as their head of state and for Britain to pay slavery reparations. On Sunday, the hashtag #notmyking was trending on Twitter.

“Respect, decorum and questioning are not incompatible,” wrote columnist Kenan Malik in the Observer newspaper. “Interrogation isn’t an expression of anti-Britishness. There is more than one way of wanting the best for this country.”

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