Memories

You can't miss the jubilee in the UK at the moment, quite an achievement for the queen being on the throne for 60 years (so far).

Family memories are rekindled. My Mom and Dad remember the Coronation, in fact it was when they first started going out together.

I remember going to Birmingham to the centenary square to see the Queen visit on the Silver Jubilee in 1977, aged 6½ - about the same age Imogen is now. My Mom took me and a friend and we took an arrangement of flowers to the Queen - although it was checked by police first as it was flowers arranged in some oasis wrapped in tinfoil - how very 1970's! I remember practising to curtsy too!


I don't really recall much about the Golden Jubilee, but that was the year we got married so perhaps my mind was on other things that year anyway.


So the Diamond Jubilee this year seems to have created a craze amongst some. We wouldn't describe ourselves as royal fans per se, but Imogen has had some interest in it with school having a jubilee picnic and talking about the royal family recently. Some friends of ours were up in London today to watch the river parade - how wet they must have been.

Something to connect these years, my brother recently passed onto me some bunting. Not just any old bunting, although old it is. This bunting was hanging at the garage owned by my grandfather for the Queens Coronation, here it is in this picture - although the picture is black and white from then. Obviously the coronation was 1953, so 59 years ago rather than 60. 

 

British made too, I doubt much of the bunting hanging around this year was made in Britain.

I separated a piece of this bunting for Imogen to take to show her class as school along with this photo and a photo of local children including my Dad aged 12 at a coronation celebration. Her teacher was so impressed Imogen was asked to pop and ask the Headteacher if she could show it to the whole school at an assembly, something she did and enjoyed. I even got the iron out to reduce the creases! Imogen also wore lots of jubilee colours that day, including the knitted crown I whipped up the night before whilst at a playshack for a birthday treat for one of her friends.

So thanks to having a family of hoarders - firstly my Nan who kept this all those years, and then my brother who acquired it when Nan passed away and the house was being cleared, now the bunting is here for us to keep a while.




Do you have any jubilee memories?