The Duke of Eninburgh or An Excuse to Brag

As part of my sixth-form, I took part in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award. If you don't know what it is, it's basically a program to help young people do things. Or something. I forgot. You do some volunteer work, some exercise, some learning, an expedition, and at the highest level some more volunteering but away from home. And it's run by the Duke of Edinburgh, hence the name.

Well to sum up two years work in a (long) sentence I volunteered at an animal sanctuary, went to the gym, learnt to drive (not that I wouldn't anyway), spent a week in a café at a railway station, and did a really ling walk through the highlands of Scotland. It seems I may have done the award quite fast, since I did it in just under two years and the minimum time was 18 months. So anyway, after having the book sent off and everything being sorted by my mother whilst I was at uni, and getting given a pin, I finally got to go to London and be presented with my certificate 'in the presence of' the Duke of Edinburgh himself (by that they mean he came in and talked to us in groups for a bit and then went off to talk to other groups whilst we actually got presented with the certificates)

If you don't actually know anything about the British aristocracy and want to know what the Duke of Edinburgh is doing in London at this point I'll go through it. The Duke of Edinburgh is Prince Philip aka the Queen's Husband. He isn't king because kings outrank queens but it's her that's the heir of the previous king, so she outranks him. Blame archaic gender inequality, but then again it wasn't so archaic when the present Queen was crowned.

Anyway, so this was the point of this blog - I've met royalty, so long as you take yet to mean 'been in the same room and answered questions asked to a group at levels which the person answering could hear'. But still, I also got to see St. James's palace, which is the official seat of the British royalty (as opposed to Buckingham Palace, where they live). All the official stuff gets done there, but I'll come back to the palace when I cover the rest of the ceremony.

After the Duke had gone on to talk to people from other parts of the country came the actual presentation of certificates, done by a mountaineer who's name I can't remember, but he has climbed the 14 highest mountains in the world, and is one of 12 people - in the world - to have done it. Fun fact: It's easier to rescue you from the moon than from the summit of Everest, because whilst they could get another spacecraft up to the moon a helicopter can only get up 6000 meters, so mountains above that are out of range.

After the presentation and photographs and speech, we had to wait, because the way out was through a room with people who hadn't finished, so the room we were in, where you wait to be introduced to the monarch, and the next one along, the throne room (also in use, but they'd met the Duke, and so finished, first) were opened up so we could look round and 'mingle'.

To make it quick all the rooms are impressive, and I doubt I'd be able to describe them. There are no photographs, because cameras weren't allowed (unless you were an official photographer). Go try google images or something. But yes, I've seen the throne of England. I also have a certificate and am a member of what is apparently an elite group (those who've completed the award). That's all really. I don't know what'll come next, probably a grumble or that introspection thing. I don't think I've spent too much time bragging, but I reckon if you can't blog about meeting royalty what can you blog about?