I missed the Queen in 1997

I expect she was too tied up with the Diana thing. But we were scheduled a close encounter. It seems to be our lot every ten years ending with a 7.

Today Her Majesty is opening Diamond, a few hundred yards from where I sit at work. She just drove past the office – police rider in front, big black limo (Update @ 15.13: actually a very deep red; just went to wave her off) with flag on the top, and a long train of black 4x4s following. I'm guessing she won't have to stand in quite as many queues as we did on the Diamond Open Day. Let me not dwell on the near treasonable suggestions of some of my colleagues that, worthy though the Royals might be, they are not at the forefront of academic excellence and therefore the whole thing will go straight over their heads. Small talk along the lines of "I've got quite an expensive diamond too, you know" will pass no one's lips.

So, that's 2007. 1997, like I say, other things got in the way. 1987 was our second visit to Buck House so that she could pin something on my father. Or if memory serves, maybe she hung it round his neck. Or both. Quite an entertaining sight: five-foot-nothing Queen vs six-foot-six dad. I got the day off from the job I had just started at (face it, it's a good excuse). We rolled up in a big black army batmobile that could hold me, my sister, our parents and a driver quite comfortably, which was a pleasant contrast to our first visit in 1977. That had also been so that HMQ could pin something on my father, and we were on the verge of parting for Bangladesh. So, everything including the car was packed up and we had to borrow my grandmother's little beige Mini for the trip. We must have looked like something out of a sitcom. A long line of big black Daimlers, Bentleys etc. stretching down the Mall ... and this little Mini in the middle, bursting at the seams with us. Granted that I was 12 and my sister correspondingly even younger and smaller, but still it was clear to all of us even then that God did not intend us to be a Mini-driving family.

Family and guests of the recipients sit in seats around the edge of the throneroom while the centre seats, facing forwards, are empty. They fill up gradually as the recipients are announced one by one, get their gongs, and take a seat. This seemed to go much more quickly in 1987 than in 1977, probably because I was old enough to have actually heard of some of the people involved.

For 1977, my father was announced, the Queen pinned his medal on and, as she did with each person, exchanged a few words. A look of utter bafflement crossed her face before she spoke again. Later we learned she had asked what his next posting was and he had told her. The bafflement was Her Majesty struggling to think what on earth her armed forces were doing in Bangladesh.

"Well ..." she replied, "that will be ... different." The expression passed into family lore.

On the way back I took with me a handful of gravel from the Buckingham Palace courtyard. I lost it somewhere in Bangladesh. There is a small corner of Dhaka's Banani suburb that is forever England.

UPDATE: my mother has noted my omission of a key detail: having carefully micromanaged my grooming from the head down for the occasion, she foolishly called it a day before she reached the feet. Upon being disgorged from the Mini it was observed that I was wearing my cricket shoes. Fury is ... quite a mild word to use to describe her feelings, but on the plus side, when you're in Buck House not even your mother is going to raise her voice that much.

So, roll on 2017 ...