In honour of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second's Golden Jubilee celebrating 50 years as Monarch of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, The Palace put on a fantastic weekend of events and parties across London and the UK. The British Government also went as far as allowing a double public holiday resulting in a 4-day weekend of fun, parties and history in the making.
It all started with a classical concert on the Saturday night called "Proms at the Palace" where 12,000 VERY lucky people won tickets in a ballot to this concert in the Queen's "back garden". We watched it at home live on television with all 11 speakers on, the closest we could get to "the real thing".
On Sunday there were a lot of church services all over the UK attended by various members of the Royal Family.
Then on Monday it was back to the parties. There were 5 stages around The Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park in London, each representing a different region of the world. We started off at Africa's stage where we joined in with people all over the UK singing the Beatle's "All you need is Love". The idea was to get everyone, including the Queen, to sing at the same time. We had the African rendition sung by The Ladysmith Black Mambazo's followed by a short concert by them. Being great fans of all African music we really enjoyed it. We were in the park with our friends, Michael and Barbara Freed and their two sons, Benjy and Zack. Barbara had packed an excellent picnic lunch for all of us so we made our way to the Asian stage and picnicked on the grass.
That evening was the second concert at The Palace, this one was Pop instead of Proms and was FANTASTIC!!! We were really envious of the second 12,000 ballot winners as this was a real concert of GREATS: Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Paul McCartney, The Beach Boys, Tony Bennett, Rod Stewart, Shirley Bassey, Cliff Richard, Tom Jones, Elton John and the list just goes on and on… Our friend David joined us for this concert and we had all 11 speakers doing a great job, I hope the neighbours enjoyed the concert too (-:
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Click on an image to see an enlarged view
Then for the finale on Tuesday, the day started with a procession of soldiers, guards and most of the Royal family escorting the Queen in her GOLDEN carriage from The Palace to St Paul's Cathedral for a Thanksgiving Ceremony. We stood on The Strand and got a great view of the whole procession, WOW!!!
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This was followed by a Nottinghill / Mardi Gras type of carnival procession which we watched on television from home as it was the best view after the Royal box where the Queen and her family sat, our invitations must have been delayed in the mail (-: It was an amazing procession with brilliantly colourful outfits followed by the Chicken Shed Children's acting group singing to the Queen and all sorts of cars, floats and other memorabilia of the last 50 years bringing up the rear.
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Then to finish off the long weekend Annie and I were going to the theatre and had another new experience on the way, one that we may never get the chance to repeat. All of the streets in Central London were closed to traffic so we got to walk down the middle of Piccadilly, along Pall Mall and St James, around Trafalgar Square and up Charing Cross. It was what London would feel like if it was a pedestrianised city. BRING BACK THE TRAMS AND SCRAP THE CARS!!!
We went to see the play "Stones in His Pockets" which we thoroughly enjoyed and finished off the evening with supper at a nearby restaurant.
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The Queen's Golden Jubilee
The evening ended with a SPECTACULAR fireworks display which we watched from Hyde Park. We could see the fireworks in the sky as well as on two giant screens so had them covered from every angle, just working out where to look first or next was the problem.
