To the Tower with the scoundrel and don't spare the horses!

"Good afternoon Mr Brown", said the friendly policeman as he handed back my passport and invitation at the main gates of Buckingham Palace last week. "Just follow that lady with the pink hat over there and go through the central entrance". As Jacquie and I walked across the Queens courtyard towards the Palace doors, my stomach churned for a moment and I began to feel a tear welling up inside. It was indeed quite an emotional experience. Reading the pages of The Royal Garden Party website it states that guests are invited because of their good works in the community.

 Thousands had been there before me, thousands have received an invitation to the Royal garden party, but I was the first of our particular line of Browns ever to enter through those gold trimmed gates and I felt honoured to be there. 

Security was tight and with very good reason, the gardens were packed with the great and the good from all over the British Isles and beyond. Marksman lined the rooftops of the Palace, the constant hum of nearby helicopters, always just within reach in case of trouble, were always just far enough away so as not to be too much of an intrusion. There was, of course, no trouble whatsoever but with every major Royal present, ex Prime Minister John Major, cabinet ministers Liam Fox and Patricia Hewitt and bundles of a,b,c and d list celebrities too numerous to mention, the Yeomen of the Guard certainly had their work cut out.

We walked arm in arm, Jacquie and I, onto the Queens lawn, ( Judges report read "a bit raggedy at the edges, well worn but with very few weeds") bathed in glorious sunshine which lasted throughout our stroll around the extensive gardens. It was reminiscent of a scene from a Sunday evening Georgian drama series, with all the cast in their finery, genteely meandering along the myriad of paths that appear to criss-cross the Palace grounds, occasionally exchanging a smile, a nod of the head or an unspoken "How do you do" as they passed like ships in the night. 

"Look at that Hydrangea!", I said to Jacquie, "My goodness that's beautiful.... it doesn't have any perfume but the colour is astounding". It was bursting with flower and fresh new buds, all of them capable of re-use as thousands of cuttings, but dare I pinch a cutting from the Palace gardens?. "Off with his head !", I could hear the cry coming from the judges bench. "To the Tower with the scoundrel and don't spare the horses !". 

After a final lap around the lake we arrived at the tea tent, just in time for tea and cakes and of course, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off (we all knew that we'd be getting those didn't we). 

The band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards played their triumphal, rabble rousingly patriotic tunes from a nearby marquee as we queued for our tea but....just before we reached the front the music stopped, everyone went deathly silent and turned away from the table which groaned with the weight of the food, "It must be the Queen", said Jacquie just as the National Anthem began to waft across the lawns. We stood, as did everyone else, in deferential silence, like human statues turned to stone before the Emperors gaze.

In a few moments the National anthem finished and we all relaxed again. The Queen made her way down the steps of the terrace and across the lawns to the Royal enclosure, stopping and chatting to her subjects as she passed. Half way along her path through the garden the heavens opened and we were all treated to a right Royal soaking, but it didn't really matter, nobody really minded, we were just all so happy to be there.

FROCK WATCH.......report............

The Queen wore a brilliant green two-piece outfit with a matching hat. The green theme was followed along with a see-through, wrap-around umbrella, which sported a matching green stripe along the bottom edge.

 Charles, Philip and Edward wore traditional tails and the ladies, Camilla, Sophie and Princess Anne wore cream, blue and magnificent ice green colours respectively. Young Pippa Middleton was there as well with her parents and she too looked as much at home as the rest of the Royal entourage in a short, dark blue flowing and billowing skirt that was, untraditionally, above the knee and showed almost no sign of that now, world famous bum.

Separated by a red rope, the two parties, the Royals and the Commoners took their tea and chatted politely until, at 5.50 the Queen left to a rapturous applause from all of her guests. It really had been a wonderful afternoon, three hours in the very heart of London and it felt as though we were hundreds of miles away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

 We were told beforehand that we couldn't take cameras with us and that mobile phones had to be switched off before entering the Palace grounds, but at five minutes to six, as we made our way back to the terrace and the doors that led to the real world beyond, we couldn't help but notice that almost every one had their phones out and were taking photo's in the grounds. "I may never get another chance to visit this garden", said one very well dressed chap standing next to me, " We have to leave the Palace in a little over three minutes and I'm sure that they won't kick me out now and anyway, how can they possibly confiscate all of the 'phones, or delete all these photos, they'd be here all night".

Yes, we took photo's inside too, but they're a bit too blurry for publication. As for the cuttings.........did we get any?..........well, that would be telling...... you never know we might just get asked to the Palace again.

The Royal Connection

I had wrongly assumed, after resigning from my post as Chairman of the gold award winning Grimsby in Bloom committee last week, that life would become a little quieter now. More time I thought, to sit and read. More time perhaps to write down some old thoughts, think up some new ones and most certainly more time to enjoy the solitude that walks hand in hand with my professional life as a self employed gardener in Northern Lincolnshire. But, it seems to have been yet another week of tying up loose ends, tedious committee meetings and flamboyant talks to Ladies Groups, all of which could easily have made their way towards becoming the theme for this weeks Sunday Night blog, but, after receiving an unexpected midweek letter a couple of days ago, I really couldn't write about anything else and when I finally get around to telling you all about it, you'll begin to understand why.


It'll be twenty years in a few weeks time, since I was incarcerated within Her Majesty's Prison, HMP Hull. I'd been attempting to smuggle cannabis into the country when I was caught by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise Officers and sentenced to twelve months in jail. "Smuggler had drugs in underpants" ran the headline in the local paper. It was, as you can imagine, a very low point in my life. Her Majesty's prisons are not at all the drink and drug drenched dens of debauchery which the media presents them to be, it was bleak and it was severe.


If ever you find yourself travelling along the main road out of Hull City Centre travelling eastwards towards Spurn Point, but before you reach Curlew Corner on the Salt End peninsular, you'll notice the large and imposing Victorian prison complex on your left hand side, it's 30ft high brick walls topped with razor wire mark the boundary between two entirely separate worlds.


It was built over 140 years ago to punish and contain wrongdoers of a very different age, in a time when the punishments didn't always fit the crimes. As part of my own punishment, I was locked into a small, grey, stinking cell for 23 hours a day, accompanied by two other petty criminals, strangers to me from the East Riding of Yorkshire. We were allowed one shower a week, one hours exercise in the prison yard a day, (if it wasn't raining) and a plastic bucket for a toilet, let me assure you, it was not a holiday camp and there were no easy chairs and television sets for every inmate, even though the very worst of the tabloids like to tell you there are.


There was one barred window, quite high up on the outside wall of our tiny, three man cell, opposite to the heavy steel door which opened every morning to the accompanying call of "C'mon now you lot, slop out time!".The window had obviously been designed with the intention of being just too high up the cell wall for inmates to look out of easily, but if we took it in turns, all three of us could spend a few moments every day, before our legs began to ache, watching real life pass by on the busy road, three floors below. By standing with one foot on the bridge of the bunk bed and the other on the flimsy, prison issue table, with our hands gripping tightly on to the bars on the window which separated us from the normal world outside, we could catch a glimpse at the life that we were missing.


 As you'd imagine, with a Victorian prison, the barred window didn't have the luxury of glass and more than once a flurry of snow flakes carried on a swirling North Easterly blizzard dampened the pillow of my unfortunate disgruntled cell mate on the top bunk. Conversely, that same unforgiving wind which brought with it the snow flakes, also took away with it the unwelcome smells which came from the 3 plastic buckets with their 3 ill-fitting plastic lids, designed more to hide the contents from sight than to contain any of their smells.


I hope that I don't appear to be complaining and moaning about my lot, or anything like that. I done wrong, I knew that then and I know that now. I suppose that, in a small way my recent attempts at voluntary work over the last few years have always been founded on my need for acceptance within society.


 So you can imagine the smile on my face last Wednesday, almost 20 years to the day since I began my punishment within the red brick Victorian walls of Hull Jail, when I opened an unexpected letter from one of Her Majesty's Ambassadors, the Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire.


 My wife Jacquie and I, the Lord Lieutenant explained, have had our names put forward to him for doing good work in the area and he wanted to know if we were available on a few dates in mid June/July as Her Royal Majesty, Elizabeth II, Queen of England would like to invite us to one of Her Summer Garden Parties held in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.


There are times in everyone's life when you feel as though you've reached the bottom. But, one thing I can carry from my own experience is that the dual burdens of regret and remorse are far too heavy a load for any of us to bear for a whole life time, look forward to the future and what you can become. A leopard can change its spots.