The day I (sort of) met the Queen
When I was just a lad, I got used to singing "God save the King" and it seemed very strange at first to sing "God save the Queen", but there was nothing strange about it for my maternal grandparents. They were already young adults when Queen Victoria died and they lived on through the reigns of four Kings before dying in the middle sixties. My parents lived in five reigns, while I have lived in only two and a majority of people in this country have known only one monarch. I have no memory of my other grandparents, who died relatively young, although we have a photo which shows my father's mother holding a baby, with a little girl of about three, recognizably my sister, standing beside her. This must have been taken at my christening.
For seventy years now the Queen has done a unique job extraordinarily well. I am not an out-and-out monarchist, but I appreciate the stability afforded by a constitutional monarchy when the incumbent remains above the hurly-burly of party politics. So when the Queen visited my home town of Kingston upon Thames back in the 1990s, I went down to the Market Place to watch her go by and help to make her feel welcome here. I found a spot behind a family with two children, so, being tall, I would have a good view. After a while, I saw the white-haired head of the Mayor, the tall Councillor David Edwards, moving through the crowds. Soon I could see that he was walking alongside the Queen, with broadcaster David Jacobs, Deputy Lieutenant for Kingston, on the other side. The three moved towards us and then broke up to talk to individuals in the crowd. The Queen spotted the two young children and made a beeline for them. She spoke kindly to them and they gazed up at her in utter wonderment. I could see them thinking, "The Queen is talking to US - little us!" She was standing about three feet away from me, but spoke neither to me nor to the parents. Those children will have a story to tell their grandchildren.
Uploading ....