A good portion of the world has been watching Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee this week. After all, it’s not often that a reigning monarch has been on the throne for 70 years, so that’s good reason alone for many people to want to see all the hoopla. However, it can’t be denied that Great Britain’s Royal Family has been an obsession for millions of people for decades.
There’s always been something of a mystique around the Royal Family. After all, they’re rich, famous, and their royal bloodline goes back for centuries – that lends some people to think that they’re nothing like any of us. So of course, when one of them does or says something that could be considered “normal,” it makes the news.
Case in point…
Several years back, a story made the rounds about Queen Elizabeth. She was walking near her 50,000-acre private estate of Balmoral Castle, in Scotland, with a Royal protection officer, Richard Griffin. The Queen wasn’t dressed up in her typical dress, with a matching hat but instead was in simple tweeds and a headscarf. Very low-key.
As they walked, they came across two American tourists, who were hiking
Said Griffin, “It was clear from the moment we first stopped that they hadn’t recognised the Queen – which is fine – and the American gent was telling the Queen where they came from, where they were going to next, and where they’d been to in Britain. And I could see it coming.
“And sure enough, he said to Her Majesty, ‘And where do you live?’ And she said, ‘Well, I live in London but I have a holiday home just the other side of the hills’.”
Griffin, who’s now retired, said that one of the hikers asked the Queen how often she had been coming to visit Balmoral.
The Queen replied that she had been coming for more than 80 years, ever since she was a little girl.
Griffin continued: “And you can see the cogs ticking. He said: ‘Well if you’ve been coming up here for 80 years, you must’ve met the Queen’.
“And as quick as a flash, she says, ‘Well I haven’t, but Dicky here meets her regularly.'”
So the hiker turned to Griffin and asked what the Queen was like.
Griffin knew he could have a little joke with Her Majesty, because he had been working with her for a long time. So he responded: “Oh, she can be very cantankerous at times, but she’s got a lovely sense of humour.”
The hikers then asked the Queen to take a photograph of them and Griffin, and then for Griffin to take a picture of them and Her Royal Highness.
Griffin ended the story by saying, “We never let on and we waved goodbye and then Her Majesty said, ‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photos to his friends in America and hopefully someone tells him who I am.'”
Former Royal protection officer Richard Griffin reminisces about a picnic he went on with the Queen at Balmoral and an encounter they had with two American tourists who did not realise they were in the company of the monarch.#PlatinumJubilee: https://t.co/orTd7551d3 pic.twitter.com/ta8cSLOZgE
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 4, 2022
So yep, the Queen of England has a sense of humor (well, humour), just like the rest of us.
And the American tourists? Well, I would love to know what the guy’s response was when he figured out who he had been speaking to. 😉
Feature Photo (cropped): Iain Cameron / Wikimedia / CC by 2.0
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1 comment
Love this.