Gifts fit for royals: Bootees boomerangs and fairy dust
IT’s as tough a gift dilemma as you’ll ever come across – what do you give the family who have everything?
Well apparently a bag of salt, a marzipan brandenburg Gate, Weetabix, pickled garlic – and a sprinkling of fairy dust.
These are just a few of the gifts the Royal family received from heads of states and members of the public last year, revealed in an official list published by the Royal household yesterday.
It showed Prince Charles returned from his official tour to New Zealand and australia with armfuls of presents for his grandchildren.
They included a pair of bootees, a woolly hat and a blanket for Princess Charlotte, as well as woollen poncho from the speaker of the New Zealand parliament.
He was also given a woollen tank top and a pair of boxer shorts for Prince George, with the australian prime minister passing on 12 children’s books for the youngsters.
In Ireland a well-wisher presented Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall with two giant lollipops and a ceramic money box for each of the children.
but the most imaginative gift by far was given to the Prince by a member of the public in New Zealand – a bag of fairy dust, surely the perfect present to make any little princess’s dreams come true.
However the couple did get some gifts for themselves, including a pair of boomerangs.
Other gifts for two-year-old George included two cup-and-ball style Kendama games and a painting of a Kabuto Kazari samurai helmet given to his father, Prince William, by the governor of Tokyo in March.
The Queen also received her fair share of unusual gifts. In June, Germany’s president Joachim Gauck gave her majesty a marzipan replica of the brandenburg Gate and a rather strange portrait of her as a young girl riding a blue horse with her father George VI. The painting left the normally diplomatic sovereign utterly flummoxed, leading her to remark ‘that’s a funny colour for a horse’, before asking ‘is that supposed to be my father?’
she also received a bag of salt in March from the governor of the british Virgin Islands – a yearly gift given as rent for salt Island.
a rather more traditional gift came from Michelle Obama, who gave the Queen a beautiful silver honeycomb and bee bud vase made for her by Tiffany and Co, as well as a gift box of lemon verbena tea, a candle, two small pots of honey and a jar of honey butter from the White House Kitchen Garden.
When it came to Prince Harry, however, it seemed the gifters had been rather at a loss for what to give him. In New Zealand, one member of the public gave Harry what appears to be a shopping bag of random items, including a packet of Jaffa Cakes, a hand bell, a jar of Marmite and what was described as a bag of ‘pineapple lumps’. another gave him some Weetabix.
However some rather more traditional choices were made when it came to gifts for him to pass on to his young niece and nephew.
Harry was presented with three soft toy penguins, a quilt, a snowsuit and a soft toy kakapo – a flightless parrot – for Charlotte. and in south africa last month he was given two named children’s
‘Funny colour for a horse’
rugby shirts from the chief executive of the Natal sharks club.
Princess anne was another family member who may have been rather confused with some of her presents, which included a jar of pickled garlic and the board game Mindtrap.
Official gifts can be worn and used, but are not considered the Royals’ personal property, and as a result they do not pay tax on them. They can eat any foodstuffs they are given and perishable gifts worth less than £150 can be given to charity or staff. Gifts cannot be sold or exchanged, however, and eventually become part of the Royal Collection – held in trust by the Queen for her successors and the nation.
The rules on gifts were tightened following an official inquiry in 2003 after it emerged that those given to Charles were regularly being given away, sold or even destroyed.