The dazzling Queen
After that brilliant birthday weekend, a glorious picture pullout of her life in jewellery
AFTER seven weeks, more cards and cakes than the Palace post room can handle, a visit from the world’s most powerful man, an equestrian spectacular at Windsor, a national service of thanksgiving and a bumper Trooping The Colour, the Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations formally concluded yesterday with a homespun procession of hippy dancers, a cardboard Britannia and a pig on a bicycle.
The Monarch clearly loved it all – particularly the bicycling porker – but there was no hiding her sense of relief. This was, in part, down to the sunshine. With less than an hour to go, she had been anxiously tweaking the net curtains in the Palace’s Centre Room to check on the weather which had been foul all morning.
In the event, she was spared a repeat of the shocking conditions which bedevilled her Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant in 2012.
There was also an inescapable feeling that, henceforth, she will be quite happy if people stop mentioning her age for a bit and redirect any further hoopla towards other, more deserving souls. Thanking the 10,000 drenched wellwishers lining the Mall, along with those at street parties across the nation, for their ‘wonderful support and encouragement’, the Queen paid tribute to the ‘many benefits that can flow when people come together for a common purpose’. Then came an impishly deadpan postscript: ‘How I will feel if people are still singing “Happy Birthday” in December remains to be seen.’
Here was a delightful contrast to the solemnity of Friday’s service at St Paul’s and Saturday’s military parade. Conceived by her eldest grandson, Peter Phillips, as a celebration of her personal links with more than 600 charities, The Patron’s Lunch was part-street party, part-carnival, part-walkabout.
And the omens, it has to be said, were not good. By the time the ticket-holders started arriving, it was bucketing down. Yet I barely heard a single grumble, despite a pretty draconian edict that no umbrellas could be brought beyond the security barriers (for fear of obstructing the views of TV cameras and of other guests).
‘I have to say I’m thrilled with this weather. We need a bit of rain,’ said Simon Pott, vicepresident of the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester, one of the Queen’s 600 charitable organisations. He was wearing the standard issue poncho which came with every complimentary M&S picnic hamper (along with a rather optimistic tube of sun cream).
In the run-up to this event, the £150 cost of each ticket had raised some questions. However, there was never any question of using public funds to install tables, chairs, loos, security staff, crowd barriers and megascreens for 10,000 people. The £150 ticket price was a tiny fraction of the outlay for someone like Mike Steel, a member of the Royal Society of St George, who had travelled from Borneo.
It had been a short bus ride, on the other hand, for Leo Tighe, 73, a Chelsea Pensioner. He had been invited by his old unit, the regimental association of the Irish Guards. ‘It’s going to be a brilliant day – wet or not,’ he said.
As the monsoon continued, the sight of thousands of people huddled around tables in matching plastic suits was reminiscent of