The Queens garden party - Alasdair Rust

The Queen’s Garden Party - Thursday 19th May 2016
The Queen’s garden party was a wonderful experience for me to attend at Buckingham Palace thanks to the Company and West of England and Channel Island District.
The day didn’t begin well for my first visit to London, due to the cancellation of the 06.50 train service I had booked to travel on. This resulted in catching a later service which gave me less time to get to Westminster Chapel where we were meeting. Due to the fact that this was to be my first visit to London and not knowing the area I did get lost causing it to take longer to arrive at the meeting point; but still arrived on time where I meet the rest of group and some of those who I already knew from my Queen’s badge completion course.
Once we had all changed into our uniforms, the 23 of us who were assisting at the Garden party were taken to the Palace at midday where we had our photo taken in front of it. We were then divided into groups which would be the roles that we would be doing throughout the afternoon. We then proceeded through security into the Palace Garden’s by which time it was lunch time, this took place in the Palace in one of the rooms.
The group that I was with was assigned to greet and assisting the guests who were coming through the main lobby of the Palace and into the gardens. This involved giving the guests directions on where to go and aiding them with any problems they had.
Once all the guests and dignitaries had arrived we all stood in the doorways of the gardens as the Queen and others members of the Royal Party proceeded down the Garden steps to the lake.
At this point we were given a break whist’s the guests enjoyed the music, food hampers and meeting the Royal Family. We then returned to where we were carrying out our duties as the guests and dignitaries proceeded to leave. Once they were all gone we formed up in the Main Lobby of the Palace where we were presented a certificate thanking us for our services during the party. We were then escorted off the Palace grounds through the front gates.
By the time we had finished it was around 19.00 at which point we were back at Westminster Chapel and preparing to leave, my return train service wasn’t until 20:20 which gave a small amount of time to do a spot of sightseeing on the journey back to Waterloo Station. The long journey back then arrived into Exeter just after midnight.

Alasdair Rust
10th Exeter Boys’ Brigade