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May 2020 May 2020

for special occasions. This is just as well as a large section of the wall on one side of
the carriage room has to be removed in order to get the enormous coach out.
The Queen used the Gold State Coach for her coronation on 2 June 1953. It was
last used on 4 June 2002 as part of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations. I
have to say it was just stunning and I was so glad that we had visited the Mews to
see this up close, it was just mesmerizingly beautiful.
As, we walked outside the gates of the Mews, the queue for the Garden Party had
started, so many people in a never ending line. When we got to the front of
Buckingham Palace and thought we were nearly there, the queue then took on
an X Factor type of format and you snaked up and down, up and down until
eventually we got to the gates and after the Police check, we were In.
I was pleased we had come in the main Palace gates as there are other gates
that can be used but this took us straight through Buckingham Palace up the red
carpet staircase, we were able to see the Queen’s China collection, everything
was so palatial, golden and grand, then out onto the terrace.

It was a few minutes to four and the Royals were about to make their Grand
Entrance following the same steps as we did. The Military Band started to play the
National Anthem and I felt a wash of patriotic pride, who will it be I wondered?
You never know who will be hosting at the Garden Party as Her Majesty is doing
much less now, but I still hoped that on this date it would be her.
Here they are…. Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and the Princess Royal.

These three senior Royals, although not The Queen herself, are all incredibly hard
working, so it wasn’t the Queen but it was fine. We soon soaked up the ambience
of being at Buckingham Palace. We walked around the gardens, passed by the
author Julian Fellows, Lord Fellows to be precise, who wrote Downton Abbey. He
touched his top hat and I smiled, mainly because of the irony of it all - we were
definitely both more comfortable in wellington boots planting our spuds.
The food, which let’s face it, is a pretty important part of all of this, was served to
the guests in a big long tent. There was also the Royal Tea Tent in which all the
distinguished guests were served. We had, as you can probably well imagine, the

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