The Royal Warrant

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Winter is approaching. I can tell by the way the day's are getting shorter, the light is getting greyer and I'm wearing a jacket to work because it's cold. So, what do you do on a day that is already grey? Go visit a town famed for it's immensity of greyness: Windsor. The town is small, small than paeroa small. So small that you would miss it even if you didn't blink. However, it does have a huge castle. It must get a lot of tourists, because the main street has at least one of every single fast food outlet. On your left is Windsor Castle, home of the Queen, on your right your pick of Subway, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC or Pizza Hut to name but a few.
According to our brochure, there a tour departs from the entrance every 20 mins or so. So we joined a tour group which actually turned out to have been a private coach group, never mind, she was a boring guide anyway. The royal standard was flying, so the Queen was at home. We didn't see her hanging around the garden or lounging by the pool, but who knows? While we were looking up at the tower, she may have been looking back down at us.
The town of Eton lies beside Windsor. It is also tiny and doesn't have much to it, aside from a school. Interestingly though, in the UK, if royalty makes a habit of buying stuff from your shop, you can get a royal warrant. It's a coat of arms which you can hang above your shop entrance which says stuff along the lines of "royal provider to Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother" or something along those lines. Given that the Queen lives in Windsor, you can imagine that there are quite a large number of these royal warrants hangning about the place. Where as in Regent Street, you may see one hanging above a particularly expensive looking shop sporting a single men's tie in the window (always a bad sign), in Eton there was one above a ratty, dingy little chemist. I'm guessing it's the only place in town you can buy coldral.

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