During High School and Sixth Form, I did my Bronze, Silver and Gold Duke of Edinburgh awards. DofE is mostly getting lost on mountains, dodging a lot of sheep, spending several days straight very damp, almost contracting hypothermia and crying alone in the middle of a field. Despite the bleak picture I’ve just painted, it’s quite fun…mostly retrospectively though. Once you’ve completed Gold, you become DofE Alumni, meaning that you can volunteer at awards ceremonies. I’m currently writing this very sleepily on my train home from a long day at St James’ Palace.
After wandering around London for a while, I found the entrance I was supposed to wait at. It was tucked away at the side of St James’ Park, but still heavily guarded. The Queen’s Guard (the very serious looking men with the black furry hats) are really lovely when you get on the inside of the gate. This happened at Buckingham Palace too. I remember the first time I visited Buckingham Palace. I think I was about six, and I made faces at the guards, hoping to make them laugh. I got a lot more upset than I should have done when they didn’t. But once you go through the gates into the courtyard, the smile and say hi and even wave at you! It’s so strange. I’m not a Royalist and I’ve never really paid much attention to the Monarchy. But I am British, so it’s probably very much ingrained in me that Queen’s Guards will never break their stance. It was such a bizarre experience!
Along with six other volunteers, I gave tours of the Palace to VIP guests and sat in on the awards ceremonies. I was given my Gold Award in the Gardens of Buckingham Palace because it was the 60th anniversary of the award. So, having never been inside St James’ Palace before, it was interesting to get to experience both locations. It was also lovely to hear the presentations that were given to the people who were receiving their awards, because I’d done it too. It gave me a greater sense of achievement, and a better understanding of how I can apply what I’ve learned in the real world.
Us in St James’ Palace
The inside of the Palace is beautiful. Members of the Royal family live at St James’ so although some bits felt like a museum, it was quite homey in others. They even had a Christmas tree in the entrance hall. One of the first rooms you come to when you go upstairs is the Armoury. The walls are decorated with English Infantry swords and Indian pattern muskets which initially looks very odd, though impressive.
There’s also a Tudor fireplace that was made for Henry VIII. It has ‘H’ and ‘A’ (for Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn) inscribed on the top left-hand side, with a series of ornate designs running across. On the far right there’s a similar inscription, but this time just ‘H’. This is because the fireplace took so long to make that once the designers reached the right-hand side, Anne Boleyn had already been beheaded!
From there, you move into the Queen Anne room, which has several portraits hanging on the walls. There’s painting of a man with each limb on show and of a man who has one arm and one leg obscured by a horse. This is where the phrase, ‘that costs an arm and a leg’ originates from. Painters charged people by the limb to get their portraits done. This way of charging meant that people used portraits of themselves as status symbols, proving how much money they had by how many limbs were on show.
Next to this room is the Throne Room. As you walk in, the throne is at the far end, encircled by a red canopy. It’s the senior throne of the realm, which means it’s the one you see the Queen sitting on in portraits and on TV. The canopy around it is a very expensive material, so it’s held onto the ceiling with Velcro. This way, if there’s a fire, someone can yank it down and carry it out so that it’s not damaged!
These were the main rooms that we took the VIPs to on the tours, it was actually a lot of fun showing people around. It felt quite surreal that I was considered Palace staff. That wasn’t the weirdest bit though. The most surreal moment of the day was lunchtime. I was having a picnic on the floor of a Palace- and became very paranoid about dropping crumbs!
Overall, it was a very fun day and I made some lovely new friends in the other volunteers. The only bit I didn’t like, because I’m a complete wimp and terrified of anything that vaguely resembles a horror film, was a suspicious stain on the carpet. It’s about the size of a child’s coffin (creepy) and is dark from one angle and light from another. I was talking to some of the cleaners about it and they said that the carpet has been changed three times and the stain keeps coming back. Their theory is, because St James’ Palace used to be a hospital for people with leprosy, people are buried there, and secretions are coming up through the floor (creepier). After I was told, I avoided that patch of carpet.
Hopefully I don’t get haunted tonight.
Wanderlust And Other Ramblings 