Duke Of Edinburgh

I was home for one day on Wednesday two weeks ago (it took me a while to get round to finishing this blog entry) to finally collect my Duke Of Edinburgh award.

I was kind of shattered from going out a bit too much earlier in the week and was hoping for a bit of a lie in when I got home. But it turned out my presentation was at 11am so there wasn't much chance of that. In fact we had to be at the palace at 10 something or other to give them time to get us all ready for the presentation at 11. So at 9 my sister and I left the house to make our way to St. James' Palace. We managed to get there before the set time and got in the red London queue (there were different queues depending on which part of the country you were from). As we made our way into the palace it was all quite weird. I'm not very comfortable when things are really formal and it was obviously very formal in the palace. It was strange seeing what seemed to be palace servants around the place, something I find very alien, especially in this day and age. And we were told to go from room to room, pointed the way by various staff members stationed at doorways. It all seemed a bit of a maze. The palace was grand with all sorts of castle like decorations (ie. lots of gold and old paintings). We ended up in the throne room (thats where the London group presentation was). The London group was also the first group to be presented to. We had to wait quite a while with those getting the awards on one side and our guests on the other. I spent that time talking to the people sitting next to me who were friendly (one of whom was expressing his desire to become an escort).

Eventually the Duke of Edinburgh arrived and we had to stand in a semi circle shaped group. He came and asked us questions about what we did to get our awards before asking questions to our guests. He came across as quite friendly and fun (which surprised me as I was expecting him to be a bit of an old fuddy duddy type) and he didn't make any politically incorrect comments as he seems to be known for.

After he'd left for the next room we were presented with our awards by the author Anthony Horowitz. When I was younger and actually finished the books I started reading I loved Anthony Horowitz books and considered him my favourite author so it was pretty cool to meet him. He asked a couple of questions such as what and where I studied and whether I was enjoying it.

After that we were free to go, though it took quite a while to get out as we had to wait for the other rooms to finish their presentations before we could walk through them to get to the exit.

Once we'd left we went to Misato to eat which was nice, even if there was a large queue and the 'waitresses' told us to get our own water when we asked for some. How I miss Chinatown. I stocked up on pork and chicken buns (which unfortunately I have now run out of). Then we went back home, tired but satisfied.