Remember those “what I did in my holidays” pieces you were coerced into writing at primary school? Well, this is along those lines, only it’s my day going off to see the Queen at one of this year’s Royal Garden Parties. If that sounds tedious, you may want to leave now – there are no exciting hidden surprises, I’m afraid.

Each year a few thousand people are invited to attend one of two Royal Garden Parties held at Buckingham Palace. As well as those from the world of politics, there are bishops and other religious people, quite a lot of military folks, some from the world of Scouting and Guiding and many others who were doubtless invited for some very good reasons I simply don’t happen to know.

At Stockport there were three pairs of invitations. One went to the mayor, Cllr Hazel Lees, one to the ruling Lib Dem group and one to the opposition parties. In the Lib Dem group, everyone who’s interested in going puts their names into a hat and the lucky person’s picked at random. This year it was me.

So it was, on Tuesday 20th July 2010, that I headed down to London on the train with my wife Carol, the Mayor and her husband and the leader of the Labour Group, Andy Verdeille, and his partner. My suit was freshly dry-cleaned and I was even wearing a tie (something I normally reserve for weddings, funerals and job interviews).

After a pleasant lunch in the rather impressive National Liberal Club, courtesy of one of our fellow councillors, we headed over to Buckingham Palace (all smartly dressed and with the ladies wearing hats, so the taxi driver knew just where we were heading before we’d said a word).

With the exception of foreign diplomats and royals, everyone queues. We stood in line at the front of the palace for around forty minutes alongside the bishops, army officers, mayors and all the rest. But the weather was good, everyone was happy and – oddly – the queueing never seemed an imposition.

At the entrance to the palace forecourt everyone had their tickets checked against their passports (we’d been asked to bring a second form of ID to prove our address just in case – if anyone’s was checked, I didn’t see).

We then queued again to file through Buckingham Palace and out into the back garden. As we walked through, around twenty or thirty people were relaxing in a roped-off area to one side – presumably they were more important (or, at least, better bred) than us.

Out into the forty acre garden, already filling up with eager party-goers. Facing away from the rear of the palace, two roped-off food tents to our right were signed as for diplomats and royalty. The rest of us would get our refreshment over to the left – a tent about a hundred metres long where guests (after more queueing, of course) could get tea, ice coffee, apple juice and some sweet nibbles and sandwiches. Apart from one building that looms across the skyline as you look beyond the gardens, you’d barely know you were in central London at all.

Two large gazebos at opposite corners of the main lawn sheltered military bands alternating their playing (cunningly, each had a flag which was raised when playing and lowered when not – I assume they used it to signal to each other when their moment of glory had come). They played all sorts of music – the theme from Steptoe and Son sticks in my mind – perhaps as being oddly incongruous with the event.

Queen Elizabeth with an assortment of other royals emerged at 4pm to the National Anthem. The royal party split into two and circulated around the lawn – again (probably quite rightly) speaking to people far more important than the likes of us.

Along with quite a few other people, we figured that the royals would at some point go through the entrance to their tea tent, so we dutifully waited there for a glimpse. Half an hour went by with no sign of them approaching and our small crowd was starting to get slightly restless.

After a little while longer, the Yeomen of the Guard (the “Beefeaters”) marched out with pointy sticks of some sort. Their job was – in a very friendly and chatty way – to create a corridor through the crowd to ease the passage of the royals to their tea. Unfortunately this meant that Carol, from having nabbed quite a good spot near the front, found herself staring at a Yeoman’s back (and later commenting on the stitching on his badges), though she did manage to find a decent viewing angle in the end.

Finally Queen Elizabeth appeared, and shot past us moving impressively fast for a lady in her 80s. We got maybe a second or two of close-up viewing time. Since she’s also not the tallest person, those a little further back either missed her entirely or just saw the hat zipping along.

We hung on and, about fifteen minutes later, Prince Philip strolled past at a more leisurely pace, stopping to exchange a few words with some people on the way.

I think Charles and Camilla were there too, but we didn’t see them, and there were some other royals who I wouldn’t recognise if I did see them, along with a lot of impressively posh people.

And that was pretty much it. We had a tub or two of ice cream and stroll around the rose garden and arboretum, before heading out back to Euston for the train.

Was it worth doing? I’m no great royalist, but I enjoyed the day and it was definitely an experience worth having. It’ll probably be the only time I go to the garden party…but perhaps not. Andy Verdeille was on his second visit – the last being in 1975 (apart from everyone getting a bit older, not much has changed according to Andy).

We arrived back in Stockport with aching feet, but there are certainly much worse ways to spend a warm Tuesday in July.

For anyone looking for information on Nick Griffin, he was refused entry to the Royal Garden Party on Thursday 22nd July – we attended the one on Tuesday 20th July.

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