The Queen and I

It was exactly sixty years ago that I first met the Queen. Well, we did not actually meet - she passed within a few yards of me and may have glanced my way.

She was being driven through Caerphilly. I was a reporter covering the Rhymney Valley for the South Wales Argus.

I was standing at the open window of the lounge of our tiny flat in the main street, the room above my office. My bright idea was to snap an exclusive picture to go with my story.

I set up a makeshift stand for my basic box camera and waited for the Queen to arrive. When the welcoming cheers swelled I opened the window, took aim and just as her car passed, pressed the button. It was done.

When the roll of film was delivered some days later I could not wait to see the result of my brainwave. I need not have bothered. Instead of my exclusive I had caught just a blur.

Over the years I had better luck, three times having dinner with her Majesty in the magnificent Assembly Room at Cardiff City Hall.

To be accurate, with over five hundred other diners I was not close to her - I was in a far-flung corner, a long way from the illustrious top table, but I enjoyed the meal and the wine.

My main memory of reporting Her Majesty’s visits to Cardiff was riding in a car, way back in the royal motorcade, and, when she stopped for some arranged event, jumping out and running to catch what was happening and what she had said.

My most memorable meeting with the Queen took place, believe it or not, eight hundred feet below ground.

She was visiting a colliery in the Rhymney Valley and through the luck of a draw I was one of two reporters in a crowd of journalists chosen to accompany her.

She was dressed in an attractive green outfit; I wore white.

Unfortunately I did not travel down with her in the pit shaft cage. She might have been in a Fortnum and Mason lift; I hurtled down, my stomach catching up with me minutes later. I walked a few yards behind the Queen and her retinue, waiting to talk to the miners she had chatted with. She even stopped to admire the pit ponies but I failed to get a word out of them.

The visit over, her Majesty ascended regally, her outfit still pristine, my overalls suggesting I had been mining coal not information.

Years later my wife and I were invited to a Garden Party, with about three thousand other guests, at Buckingham Palace. I enjoyed the cucumber sandwiches and we then stood in line watching her walk past. There was no time for a chat.

But at last, I have achieved my ambition - to really meet the Queen.

As one of the Churchill Fellows from the past fifty years invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace to mark the fiftieth anniversary of The Churchill Memorial Trust I was introduced to Her Majesty. She smiled as she offered her white gloved hand and I managed to thank her for a memorable evening.

I would have liked to thank her for the lovely photograph and message she sent me and my wife us on our diamond wedding anniversary, but with 299 other guests in l had no chance. And I doubt if she recalled that underground visit.

Bob Skinner

Windsor Court, The Esplanade