The Garden Party

Every year the Queen opens Buckingham Palace Gardens for 'the Queen's Garden Party'. Marianne and I were invited and went last week. So did a thousand other people--it's not a small affair but for central London the garden is vast. The picture below gives some idea of the event. The crowd form into lines and the royals come out of the Palace and walk down the aisle of visitors chatting to pre-selectd people ending up in a small Royal Pavilion set aside for them to have their own tea

The tea which is provided for everyone is actually very good-fine sandwiches and cakes. The most extra ordinary thing though is that very large numbers of people sit in chairs in long rows, several deep, in front of the Royal Pavilion just staring at the royal party eating their tea. I'm sure the royals are world weary enough not to be disconcerted but strange and poor manners nevertheless. The gardens are a great pleasure to walk around, they're quite immaculate and happily the sun shone all afternoon. Perfect summer party weather. Walking round we bumped into a number of other Masters whom we knew so it was quite sociable as well as being novel.