OPINION

Ordinarily my offering each week would basically involve me prattling on about some incident myself or my family have encountered.

Such snapshots of life – such as a regular encounter with the grumpy checkout
operator at the supermarket or a collision with THAT pothole on the corner of such and such a street – make the world go round.

Cynical, weary old me has to confess these days I particularly find such occurrences far more interesting than your everyday news. Perhaps you feel the same.

Having said all that, I’m thinking this week, with the death of the world’s granny leaving a lump in many a throat, it would seem somewhat disrespectful to not follow the pack and talk about that wonderful lady.

Now, for starters, I will proudly admit I am a full-blown royalist. Don’t ask me how it happened. I suspect my mum (a fellow supporter) brainwashed me with a poster of Prince, now King, Charles in 1969 when his mum made him Prince of Wales.

I was at school and had to give a speech about something big in the news but I couldn’t think of anything. Mum gave me the royal poster, told me all about it and I repeated it to my gobsmacked classmates.

Such was my enthusiastic delivery I won a packet of chocolate biscuits for my troubles and suddenly found I had a lot of friends at morning break.

From then on I was hooked. If it was royal I wanted to know about it. And that interest has carried on until this day.

So, let me tell you about the time I met the Queen. The three times in fact. Well, sort of met her.

The first time was in 1970-something in Greymouth. Oddly, having been born and raised in London, I had to come to this side of the world to see her in person.

She was in town for something – the whitebait season perhaps, I can’t quite remember – and our school got time off to see her at the local recreation ground where she did a bit of a walkaround.

Her Majesty walked along the line shaking hands and chatting away to people until she got to me, or rather, the bit of the adoring throng where I was standing.

It would be fair to say I was a little awestruck as she stopped in front of us and asked where we were from.

Unbelievably I couldn’t remember and simply smiled back. At least I think I was smiling. I may have had a stupid look on my face as I tried to recall the name of the place I lived.

Either way, she wasn’t hanging around to wait for all the cogs in my brain to whir into action and moved on to the next section of the crowd where somebody in full possession of his faculties proudly trumpeted “Westport” as she asked the same question.

To this day every time I hear the name “Westport”, it causes me to relive the embarrassment.

But life goes on. And we fast forward some 10 years or so to the mid-80s when the Queen and I again crossed paths.

This time I was part of a team of newspaper reporters covering a section of the royal tour which spent some time in Christchurch.

My part in the exercise involved the arrival of the royal yacht Britannia into Lyttelton Harbour in the early daylight hours. The Queen walked up the gangplank back on to the yacht later that evening.

Odd duties I know but hey, I’m a royalist right? I’m going to grab any opportunity I can get. At least I can say I covered a royal tour during my career.

Anyway.

So there I am right up on the hills above Lyttelton Harbour this day with a pair of binoculars watching out at sea for my ship to come in. Which it did, with a full brass band on deck playing the Thunderbirds theme all the way down the harbour I recall. Stirring stuff.

But before it docked I’m watching it to make sure nothing dramatic happens which the good citizens who read our paper will need to know about. Remember this was way back before the internet and mobile phones etc. And instant news.

I’m a little excited of course, and it’s cold, and suddenly I realise I need a pee.

So, still watching with one hand holding the binoculars and the other, er, holding something else, I go behind a small bush.

Then the bush tells me to “Bugger off!”. I kid you not.

Turns out the ‘bush” is actually a soldier in camouflage, laying still to blend in with his surroundings, and there are a number of them scattered around unseen exactly where I was standing, all presumably trying not to laugh at their mate who just about got weed on by an excited royal-watching journalist.

Later that day I completed the second half of my assignment and watched the Queen walk up the gangplank on to the yacht without incident. She did look in my direction briefly as I tossed my journalistic impartiality aside and waved like a lunatic hoping she’d send somebody over with an invite for me to go on board and have a sherry and talk about the corgis or horses or something.

She didn’t. But I didn’t mind. I’d got to see her. Again.

And so to the last time I saw her.

This time I was in London catching up with rellies and I’d walked from Buckingham Palace – not where my rellies live by the way – back up The Mall (as in the first part of the name Malcolm) that red paved piece of road we Kiwis insist on pronouncing the same as the rugby term or the local shopping precinct.

The road holds a bit of a sentimental place for me as it was there, near the Admiralty Arch at the top, that my parents became engaged in 1959. And so there I was in my own little world when I noticed a police motorcycle leading a small convoy towards me.

The cars had to slow slightly to go through the arch and it was then I noticed the Queen in the back of the biggest one. And she waved at me.

I couldn’t believe it. Firstly I’d imagine it would be very rare for the Queen to just go out without some major traffic hiccups etc. I mean she didn’t just pop out for a pint of milk and a tin of dog food did she?

Anyway, I was still standing there stunned a couple of minutes later when a couple of Americans who had been taking pictures of the arch, and as it turned out the little motorcade, sidled up.

“That was the Queen, wasn’t it?” they asked excitedly, equally as surprised as me.

I managed to answer in the affirmative but beyond that the occasion was too much for me again.

Hearing my accent, they asked a question I’d been asked by somebody famous many years before and all I could do was smile back with a stupid look on my face and absolutely no idea in the world where I was from.