To look at the Queen
May. 7th, 2009 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienIt broke 100 degrees in Tucson today, for the first time this year. Classes are over, and the campus was eerily quiet. The landscapers whipped out the wilted pansies around the building where I work, and replaced them with zinnias, which are somewhat more summer-proof. On my way home, I was chatting with a security guard who had stopped to admire the new flowers, and mentioned that I grew up in England. So, as one does, she asked me if I'd ever seen the Queen.
As it happens, I have. Twice. After all, it's a fairly small country, and being seen is in a sense her job, so the odds against it aren't that high.
The first time was on purpose,
It was 1977, the Silver Jubilee year, and the country was awash in red, white and blue bunting and purple-and-silver souvenirs; there was even a city bus trundling around in silver paint adorned with the Jubilee logo. Her Majesty's celebratory visit to Sheffield happened in the early summer, on the day of our school Sports Day. (Annual school-wide track-and-field competition, watched by the whole school.) The afternoon of sports day was traditionally free -- it was an independent school, so they could do that kind of thing -- and a group of us walked over to the park where the Queen was to drive by, shepherded by a teacher or two, I suppose. We lined up behind the barriers and waited, on a cloudy, gray afternoon; the Queen was running late, but eventually the open Land Rover swept by with the Queen waving her white-gloved hand from the back. We cheered and waved our little flags, and ran as far as we could alongside the vehicle. She was smaller than I expected, I remember, and very heavily made-up. Afterwards, it was after school hours and we had to find our own way home, scattering to find buses going the right way in an unfamiliar part of town with half the streets blocked off.
The second time, almost twenty years later, was more or less by accident,
Every year on the Queen's Official Birthday (which is not the same as the anniversary of her birth, but on a day in June when good weather is slightly more likely) she rides in procession from the Palace to the Horse Guards for the Trooping of the Color ceremony. For many years she rode on horseback, but a few years before this story happened her horse of many years had died, and after that she rode in an open horse-drawn carriage. On that day in 1997, it so happened that I'd arranged to meet someone that day -- a Saturday -- to go to one of the South Kensington museums, and we were to meet on the bridge in St James's park. Neither of us had remembered or realized that there was anything out of the ordinary going on that day, but by the time we met up the crowds were getting thick, and then we found that there was no getting across the road we needed to cross because the procession was about to come through. So we waited, and after a few minutes the carriages came by, escorted by scarlet cavalry with sweeping horsehair-plumed helmets. The Queen, and the Queen Mother, and somebody else -- maybe Princess Margaret or the Duchess of Kent; there and gone in a flash of glossy paintwork and a jingle of harness. I can't remember whether they let us cross, after that, or whether we had to backtrack. I do remember taking a rather circuitous route to get to the museum.
As it happens, I have. Twice. After all, it's a fairly small country, and being seen is in a sense her job, so the odds against it aren't that high.
The first time was on purpose,
It was 1977, the Silver Jubilee year, and the country was awash in red, white and blue bunting and purple-and-silver souvenirs; there was even a city bus trundling around in silver paint adorned with the Jubilee logo. Her Majesty's celebratory visit to Sheffield happened in the early summer, on the day of our school Sports Day. (Annual school-wide track-and-field competition, watched by the whole school.) The afternoon of sports day was traditionally free -- it was an independent school, so they could do that kind of thing -- and a group of us walked over to the park where the Queen was to drive by, shepherded by a teacher or two, I suppose. We lined up behind the barriers and waited, on a cloudy, gray afternoon; the Queen was running late, but eventually the open Land Rover swept by with the Queen waving her white-gloved hand from the back. We cheered and waved our little flags, and ran as far as we could alongside the vehicle. She was smaller than I expected, I remember, and very heavily made-up. Afterwards, it was after school hours and we had to find our own way home, scattering to find buses going the right way in an unfamiliar part of town with half the streets blocked off.
The second time, almost twenty years later, was more or less by accident,
Every year on the Queen's Official Birthday (which is not the same as the anniversary of her birth, but on a day in June when good weather is slightly more likely) she rides in procession from the Palace to the Horse Guards for the Trooping of the Color ceremony. For many years she rode on horseback, but a few years before this story happened her horse of many years had died, and after that she rode in an open horse-drawn carriage. On that day in 1997, it so happened that I'd arranged to meet someone that day -- a Saturday -- to go to one of the South Kensington museums, and we were to meet on the bridge in St James's park. Neither of us had remembered or realized that there was anything out of the ordinary going on that day, but by the time we met up the crowds were getting thick, and then we found that there was no getting across the road we needed to cross because the procession was about to come through. So we waited, and after a few minutes the carriages came by, escorted by scarlet cavalry with sweeping horsehair-plumed helmets. The Queen, and the Queen Mother, and somebody else -- maybe Princess Margaret or the Duchess of Kent; there and gone in a flash of glossy paintwork and a jingle of harness. I can't remember whether they let us cross, after that, or whether we had to backtrack. I do remember taking a rather circuitous route to get to the museum.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 04:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 04:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 04:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 05:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 08:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 11:07 am (UTC)The closest I've been to royalty was when Princess Margaret came to look round the Civil Service department where I worked at the time and I saw her and Margaret Thatcher coming out of a lift together.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 04:09 pm (UTC)Margaret Thatcher came to visit my University department once -- just after she left power, oddly enough -- but I was on a mountain in Chile at the time. I heard that my usually irrepressible boss was completely squashed by the force of her personality.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 04:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 12:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 04:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 03:31 pm (UTC)Strange that I've had such close encounters with Royalty from out here in the provinces ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-08 04:16 pm (UTC)My headmistress was invited to a royal Garden Party once, and told us all about it afterwards at a special assembly. The detail that sticks in my mind is that there was a cloakroom-tent with dressing tables, with hairbrushes and such laid out. (Doesn't sound very hygienic!)