Pussycat, Pussycat, where have you been...

...I've been to London to visit the Queen.

Sixty years ago today the then Princess Elizabeth was on holiday with her husband in Africa when the couple got word that her father had died. Overnight she went from carefree (well as carefree as a royal can be) to coronation.  Dealing with the death of a parent can be traumatic enough, but doing it in public and knowing that you are his successor to all that responsibility must have been daunting.

Following her coronation in 1953 the royal couple took off on a tour which included a visit to New Zealand. I have vague memories of her visit to, or should I say through Lower Hutt.  I must have been on Dad’s shoulders because I remember a huge crowd around me as we waited for the cars to come out way. Then cheering, and flag waving, and the blur of a black car passing.  Back home in NZ, in storage is a tall pale blue commemorative book of the tour. My grandmother gave my sister and me small red bond coronation bibles. My somewhat tatty one is now in the custody of one of my daughters. My sister had a small model of the coronation coach and horses; I wonder what became of it.

Back in 1988 when we were on our way home from PNG, we went via the circuitous route of a holiday in the UK. On our second to last day when we were looking for something to do The Man spotted an article in a tourist magazine about a concert by the Band of the Royal Household Cavalry.  We were fortunate enough to get tickets and off we went. At the Royal festival Hall on the banks of the Thames we were somewhat mused to see police wandering around with mirrors on sticks so that they could look under cars. Security was pretty high.  I had my picture taken with a busby hatted, red jacketed guardsman, who told us that they had just returned from a tour of duty in Northern Ireland.

Against an audience clad in evening suits, posh frocks and furs, The Man and I felt decidedly underdressed in our heavy jackets and jeans. When the entire audience rose to its feet and broke into applause we realised who all the pomp and circumstance was for. None other than the Queen herself had come to see her boys performing.

And do you know The Man is convinced that she looked at him and smiled.