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I sending this out a day early because it doesn’t feel right to send it out tomorrow. Back to Mondays next week.

I guess I would have been about seven or eight years old and there had been a certain buzz in the air for a few weeks – The Queen is coming, The Queen is coming. We’d been told that we were going to meet The Queen!

I honestly don’t remember now, why she was coming. I guess probably to open something or some such event, but we’d been told that we were going there to stand in the crowd and meet The Queen. When you’re that age you of course mostly believe everything that an adult tells you – Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy – The Queen is coming, we’re going to meet The Queen.

When the appointed day finally arrived, we were inspected by our classroom teacher, proper school uniform, shoes shined, hair brushed, teeth clean, matching socks, etc. and then packed into a coach and taken to the city. There was a palpable energy on the coach and I remember being told off more than once for making too much noise, I wasn’t the only one of course – excitement like that is contagious.

When we got there we were marshalled to stand on one side of the street and were told that The Queen and Prince Philip would walk down the street and say hello. Both sides of the street were packed with people, lots of children from other schools were present as well as many regular members of the public either intentionally or otherwise caught up in the days events. We were roped back from the road to prevent us surging forward the moment The Queen arrived and were waiting in anticipation, keyed up with the expectation of being told for a couple of weeks – The Queen is coming, The Queen is coming.

Then it started to rain, not hard just a good bit of British drizzle.

Then the Queen arrived, only she wasn’t walking she was in a Royal car which drove slowly down the road. The Queen was sitting on the other side of the car from us, so we saw the back of her head but that was about it. Evidently the rain had been enough to cancel the proposed walkabout and instead she had been driven along the route waving from the car window instead. Because we were on the other side of the road we didn’t even get a wave, I remember at the time feeling gutted.

Although I never got to meet The Queen, she has been the only monarch that I have known for the first fifty of my orbits of the sun. My Mum can remember her father and the coronation, and quite vividly too despite her Alzheimer’s. I guess that I might also be able to say something similar, maybe. If King Charles lives to be the same age as his mother then I’ll be the same age as he is now.

To me The Queen has been quite a constant, I remember her Silver Jubilee quite vividly when there was a tea party for the village kids in the parish hall, and obviously the more recent 50th and 70th celebrations. She has given her life to public service achieved countless things in representing this country and the Commonwealth, and she has done so in such an understated way.

I have no strong feelings either way about the monarchy although I am aware that many do, but I don’t think now is the time or the place for those discussions. It is a time to celebrate a truly great woman, and to mourn her passing in our own ways.

To Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.