Yes, I really did see the Queen at Buckingham Palace the day - even if it was from afar...
It was another case of working at NZ House paying off, as I managed to get tickets to one of the Queen's annual garden parties, and wangled it so that Kara could come along to same one as Dave and I. NZ gets allocated only 200 tickets for the 3 annual garden parties, so we were pretty lucky. It was brilliant - I'm sure I'll remember it for the rest of my life, and fully intend to bore people with my "I Remember the time I went to Buckingham Palace" story in my dotage. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside the grounds, otherwise I could do a slide show too...
The dress code is strict - dresses and hats for the ladies, lounge suits for the men. I bought a dress especially for the occasion, but I borrowed a hat from my friend Sarah, who went last year. I have since passed the hat on to my boss's wife who is going to this week's party, so technically Sarah has gotten lots of wear out of that hat, although she's never worn it herself since. The 3 of us looked fabulous naturally, and had to fight off the media as we alighted from our black cab at the grand entrance to Buckingham Palace. Ok, so I made that last bit up.
We walked through the palace itself (a HUGE thrill!) to get to the gardens at the back, which are very extensive (there's a lake, in case you didn't know). Two brass bands were placed at each end of the lawn, and three tea tents (i.e massive marquee) were set up around the lawn edge: one tent for Royalty, one for the Diplomats and one for the plebs. Strangely, someone had forgotten to put the royal tea tent pass in my invitation pack, so rather than make a scene, we settled for the pleb tent.
As a non-tea-drinker, I can't tell you if the tea actually was any good, but I rate the lemonade, and we all munched the salmon sandwiches, tiny devonshire scones, chocolate cake (complete with crown motif) and other nibbles quite happily. We walked around the garden, and basically spent most of the time calling each other 'darling', and sticking our pinkies out as we sipped our lemonade. We all stood for the national anthem, at which point HRH came out, accompanied by Charles and Camilla. Everyone rushes to the front(the wild plebs being necessarily restrained by a rope cordon to allow HRH safe passage to walk amongst the crowd). I could have busted out my 'elbows-of-steel', honed to razor-sharpness thanks to the Seoul subway, but I erred on the side of decorum. In other words, I didn't want to fight some wrinkly for pole-position to see HRH as I'm reliably informed that they only ever 'single out old people' for her to shake hands with. Short of shrieking "I'm actually 75 and this is all botox!", I figured I had little chance of success.
Dave managed to see Chuck and Cammie up close (he says Charles is very brown - must be all that gardening..). Kara and I happily spent most of the time people-watching, as it was quite fascinating to see what people were wearing, and basically who had managed to nab invites. There were loads of city councillors and mayors, and armed servicemen, several priests,
and I even saw the actor, Donald Sinden. Only no one knows who he is, but I was excited to see him! FYI, he's the old bloke on the left. The majority of people were
appropriately dressed (a few even in their national dress), but there were
some people who looked like they'd just walked in off the street, and also several women who missed the point of it being a 'garden party' and instead looked like they were going to a wedding. Of course, they may just have thought 'hey, here's a chance to wear that bridesmaid dress again'.
We were also super-lucky with the weather as we had a perfect sunny day, without it being a total scorcher. My workmates had all attended a party last year and moaned that it had been far too hot to actually enjoy it. All in all it was brilliant fun. I'm a fan of the royals I admit, but even hardened anti-monarchists would enjoy the pomp and decadence of an afternoon like that.
Salisbury Cathedral is amazing - even when half covered in scaffolding. It's home to the best version of the Magna Carta, kept in the Chapter House. Now for those of you who have been to Washington DC or who have seen the movie "National Treasure", you will know how guarded and well protected the Declaration of Independence is, in the USA. Well, the poor old Magna Carta is in some shoddy display case that looks like it was whacked together in the days before the personal computer. You almost stumble over it, rather than it beingmade a big deal of - very strange for a founding document. Even the Treaty of Waitangi has a far worthier display. The statue of the photo is of the 'Black Lady', the ghost who has been seen many times in the grounds.
