Queen Elizabeth II will be very much missed by us all. Listening to and watching coverage about her amazing life in recent days, we all noticed how many people referenced feeling "touched" by her presence - whether having actually met her, or just by feeling that she had impacted their lives.
The official photograph released to coincide with her recent 96th birthday shows the Queen with her famous smile and we wondered if there was any other smile as well-known in current times. Her good humour has always been an integral part of her story and many of the tales that have been regaled feature that humour.
Lady Anne Glenconner told a wonderful story about a visit to Mustique that the Queen made (published in the Guardian on Friday):
"We’d asked my mother-in-law, who was very eccentric rather like my dear husband, to get clothes for the people in the village because in those days you couldn’t get anything, and we wanted them to look nice. Anyway these huge boxes arrived, and when we opened them, we discovered to our horror that she’d bought a job lot of Victorian clothes, which she thought would be more fun. The villagers thought they had to dress up like that for when the Queen came, and I remember the ladies getting into their crinolines, the men wearing stove pipe hats, and they all lined up on the jetty to welcome the royal visitors. When the Queen stepped on to the island, she turned to Princess Margaret and said “I had no idea Mustique was in a Victorian time warp”.
So, we will all say a final farewell to Queen Elizabeth on Monday, 19th September and thank her for a life of service, dedicated to the people of the Commonwealth of Nations. But we will always remember her beautiful smile and sense of humour too.
