2,500 words on one morning in July. And that’s after I took out a long rant about the Honours system per se. Just as well. Here we go. In morsels.
***
It’s last November, and among Mum’s post is an envelope marked ’10 Downing Street’. Her first thought is that it contains a parking fine.
Now it’s Thursday July 3rd, and the family is off to Buckingham Palace for Mum’s investiture.
The letter was the offer of an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List. MBE as in Member Of The British Empire, or to give it its full title, Member Of The Most Excellent Order Of The British Empire (Civil Division). One thing I also learn from the ceremony is that OBE – the next one up which Kylie gets in the same queue – is not ‘Order Of The British Empire’. It’s OFFICER of the Order Of The British Empire.
In Mum’s case, the reason was ‘for services to the craft of Quilt Making’. It turns out that a group of Mum’s quilting students had been writing to Downing St for years to secure her an honour, unbeknownst to her. She’s only the second quilt maker ever to be honoured, the first one being the Durham quilter Amy Emms, honoured in 1984. Or as she signed herself in letters ever afterwards, ‘Mrs Emms, MBE.’
Alan Bennett said that having a knighthood in his case would feel like ‘having to wear a suit every day of one’s life’. Not an excuse I can entirely sympathise with. But then, not everyone likes wearing suits as much as I do.
An hour before I’m collected, I’m on the phone to Tom.
Me: I’m deciding which suit to wear. White or pinstriped might pull focus, I think. Plain black okay, do you think?
Tom: Dickon, I don’t have that problem. I’m just wearing… My Suit.
Dad and Tom don’t usually wear suits. Mum doesn’t usually wear a hat. The one she sports today is borrowed, and even that is a tasteful half-hat affair pinned to her bob haircut – she’s hardly enrolling for the Ascot Flying Saucer Brigade. So the rest of the family are Dressed Up. I’m just dressed.
***
The original investiture date clashed with one of Mum’s teaching engagements abroad. No problem, said The Palace, and simply offered her a different ceremony later in the year. I didn’t know they could do that, but this turns out to be very much the impression I take away about the staff at Buck House: unexpectedly down-to-earth, friendly, helpful, and making Mum and the rest of us feel like we’re the important ones, not them.
That equerry in the film ‘The Queen’, the one who sternly reminds Tony Blair that HMQ must be addressed as ‘Ma’am’ – to rhyme with ‘ham’ and NOT with ‘farm’ -Â is, I’m happy to confirm, closer to fiction than fact. The real Palace staff we meet are perfectly lovely. They inform you of the archaic protocol, certainly, but without condescension of any sort.
***
I’ve just returned from New York, where I was shocked to have to show my passport in order to get into bars on the Lower East Side. Thank God things aren’t like that in London, I say to myself the night before, as I file the thing away in my Drawer Of Important Things.
The first thing Mum says to me as I get in the car the next morning is, ‘Have you got your passport?’ Turns out you need it for Buckingham Palace: they’re rather big on security. Funny that. I rush back inside.
***
