Since Princess Mary’s summer palace is barely fifteen minutes from where we are staying we thought we should see what we could do to fulfil the Great Grandmother’s request to pass on a message.
Actually we knew that her Mother in Law, the good Queen herself would be arriving and thought it would be remiss of us were we to miss an opportunity to be present at the little civic reception held to welcome her here for her holiday. In the way of small country towns everywhere, the bunting flapped in the breeze while the mayor waited in his finery outside the Town Hall and the little brass band oompahed its way through the wait.
Actually it wasn’t really the Town Hall. It had been once and it still had the signs over the door declaring it to be so, if one ignored the word “Restaurant” added beneath in the fine print. None the less it served the purpose and there was a lovely red carpet rolling away from its door to further the illusion that it was the real deal. The Queen and Prince listened politely to a speech they must have heard a million times before and we thought the whole thing was simply delightful.
The Queen smiled at us, the octogenarian Prince high-fived a kid in the crowd, Mary wasn’t there but the bloke standing behind us suggested we just knock on the door of the palace, “She’ll probably answer it”, he said, and from what we’ve heard of the family’s life in the village she probably would.
We didn’t though, we snuck off and took a few photos of the old man’s boat instead.
1 comment
Very cool, Peter.
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