Celebrating the Quoon's 80th

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Elizabeth II, Her Majesty the Queen of England, was actually born in April. But as they say over here, the weather's better in June! It was certainly hot on Saturday, which was the official day for a huge parade from Buckingham Palace along the Mall to the Horse Guards Parade for Trooping the Colour, and a parade back again, followed by a flyover and a Royal Gun Salute. The whole thing was pretty impressive, and being there was overwhelming.

The parade started just after ten, but the crowds were in place well before then. The whole square in front of the Palace was cordoned off to traffic (on an ordinary morning the Victoria Memorial is actually a roundabout in the middle of three lanes of bustling, hooting traffic, the exception being half an hour every morning for the Changing of the Guard, when it makes a good vantage point, and of course state occasions, when it seems photographers and camera crew are given the run of it.)

The sun beat down, and compared to the summery t shirt, shorts, skirts and singlet clad crowd the Guards and Police looked wintery. I'm suprised none of them keeled over, and I heard an elderly solider behind me (himself clad in a suit and all his medals) gleefully describing it happening, and noting that when they do no-one picks them up - they are left like toppled nine-pins until the end of the festivities. Diverting as it would no doubt have been, I'm glad to say none of them in my line of sight suffered so badly.

It took three quarters of an hour for the whole parade to leave the palace, as they left at intervals of 5-10 minutes, to ensure everyone got arranged before the next lot arrived, I suppose. The Queen left last, and would have arrived at the Horse Guards Parade at 11am exactly to kick the whole thing off. They were there for about an hour, but I couldn't really see any of it over the crowd that was already in place. I indulged in some guerilla photography, some paparazzo, me! - everything I took down there was by dint of standing on extended tiptoe holding my camera above my head, and then evaluating the resulting photo to see if I had managed to capture anything of worth. After ten minutes of this exertion, and five photographs that made any kind of sense, my ankles and toes began to hurt (glad I'm not a ballerina, ten minutes of that on a special occasion was enough for me!) I wandered around St James's Park in the shade for a while, before taking up a position back in front of Buckinham Palace for the parade's return, the salute and the fly-over.

I'm sure everyone's seen photos of the Queen and family - if not this time round then from another state occasion - but this was different - I was there. So here are some of my pics from Saturday. Some of them are pretty poor quality - I'm somewhat ashamed to say in the absence of a larger/better camera, I sucumbed to the evils of the dreaded digital zoom.

But I've seen the Queen!

x juliet


ps to reassure you faithful and frustrated readers out there - Jenny and I are both fine and well. We've been having a hard time forcing ourselves to sit down long enough to update here, but we do have several entries awaiting publishing to bring you abreast of our adventures. We will endeavour to stop photographing the Queen and sampling local Theatre and Ales long enough to share some with you this week.

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Photos

The Mall a few days before the Parade
The flags were put up beforehand - there was a parade the weekend before, for Phillip's birthday.

Here they come!
The parade of regiments, mounted and on foot, pulling canons or just holding rifles... it seemed never-ending, and they must all have been so hot - not a shirtsleeve on show among them.

Granddaughters
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, with their cousin Prince Harry and father Prince Andrew.

The Queen's Phaeton
Everything was very regimented. The carriages did not come out all in a row, but at ten minute intervals. The Queen left the gates at 10:45 precisely. (That's her in purple, with a uniformed and be-hatted Prince Phillip beside her.)

Pageantry
The Queen stands out in a swirl of regimental colour.

Clarinet Masterclass - the Band rides past
The drums beat while the band rode but I didn't actually see any of the wind instruments being played on the trot, (thank goodness.) I should imagine it would be hard enough to control the notes with your horse in park.

The Horse Guards Parade, seen from St James's Park
The Queen is seated under the central arch, watching the Trooping of the Colour.

A Closer View
Imagine being Eighty, and celebrating your birthday by sitting in the sun for two hours, while people take photos of you, then standing on a balcony waving while people fire canons and rifles in the air. Seems like most 80 year olds wouldn't enjoy it very much.

The New Zealand Flag gets in amongst it
It certainly had a better view than I did. (That's it to the right of the London Eye.)

The Queen inspects the regiments
When they all got back to the Palace, the Queen stood outside, with Prince Phillip beside her, while all the regiments marched or rode past.

God Save the Queen
After the gun salute, the band struck up the National Anthem, as the Queen and Prince Phillip took their places among their family on the balcony to watch the fly over. (And Phillip got to take his bearskin hat off.)

The Thin Blue Line
The Bobbies were out in force. A lot of them spent most of their time having photos taken with tourists, but some of them went in for crowd control. Here you can see some of the fly-over banking over Buckingham Palace. (to the left, over the trees.)

Grande Finale
The flypast culminates with some Union Jack stripes above Buckingham Palace.