LONDON

The southern London suburb Peckham can be gloomy even when it isn’t raining – and the rain was steady last night, washing out hopes of holding a party in the street to celebrate the Queen’s diamond jubilee and bring together people who live in the fortress-like tower blocks that rear up into the sky on the local council estates.New venues were hastily created in a small community centre and church hall but there was no way other than soggy street posters to let locals know about the change.

But the organiser Jeanette Macey, who has spent weeks with other locals making homemade bunting from old sheets and hand-painting flags for the children to wave, was still cheery.

She had wanted to ”get the community working together again,” she said, something that had faded since locals had been put into tower blocks where they all stayed behind their own front doors and rarely spoke to each other.

She also wanted to wave the flag for the Queen – she points out her blue and white dress and red cardigan and grins. ”I think she’s done a marvellously good job considering what’s gone on in her life with her family. She’s still held it together, stiff upper lip and all that. Very British, isn’t it?”

Ms Macey has lived on the estate with 1000 other people since 1981. ”I was born in 1952 and I moved here when Diana and Prince Charles married and now I’m here for her 60th. I’m the queen of Peckham, don’t you think, love?”

Her brother Alec Bourne is loyally helping but his loyalty is to his sister, not to his monarch.

”What’s she ever done for the working class?” he says gruffly. ”All they do is turn up and be photographed. I’m not anti-monarchist but I don’t need them.”

Over the plastic tablecloths sat trays of mini-sausage rolls and ham sandwiches. Soufaane Traroe, 8, and his brother Aguib, 5, carried two large cakes made of recycled fabric. ”But there will be real cake later?” Aguib asked.

The director of People Empowering People, Nicholas Okwulu, said the street party had been planned to bring together residents on different council estates, break down barriers between them and work out ways to help each other in the face of funding cuts by government and councils.

Britons had planned to hold 10,000 street parties for 6 million people as part of the jubilee at the weekend, more than for the royal wedding last year. There was an estimated 2000 kilometres of bunting and one of the major supermarket chains was expecting to sell 2 million bottles of champagne, 2.8 million Victoria sponges, 1.7 million pork pies and 1.6 million sausage rolls. The supermarket chain Asda said it had sold a million Union Jacks, enough to cover 462 football pitches.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall attended a street party in Piccadilly, in central London.

Braving the damp weather, 500 revellers clapped and cheered when they realised they would be eating with royalty. Guests were asked to bring food to share with their friends and neighbours, with Charles and Camilla offering a Union Jack cake.

A Sunday Times poll reported Britons thought the Queen was more in touch with ordinary people’s concerns (35 per cent) than the nation’s elected leaders (9 per cent), and 73 per cent wanted to retain the monarchy.

First published on smh.com.au

LONDON

Reception lines can be staid affairs – but not when Kathy Lette is in the queue . She presented herself to the Queen in a suit screen-printed with corgis, their tiny eyes glittering with red, green or blue beads.
“Do you like it?” she asked the Queen, of the outfit commissioned from her mate with a sewing machine in Cronulla. “I wore it specially for you.” She says the Queen looked down and her eyes widened: “Philip!” she said, “Look at this!”
“You’ll have to move on,” he told Lette drily. “It’s too much for me!”
It was a party at the palace for 350 of the best people – in this case, Australian people, as a warm-up to the royal tour of Australia by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh due to start on Wednesday.
Lette, Australia’s comic chicklit queen, was carrying a handbag in the shape of a pot of geraniums. She was accompanied by her husband, Geoffrey Robertson, QC. The mellifluous Mr Robertson is a human-rights lawyer known best to Australians for his mental gymnastics on former ABC TV show Hypothetical. He is waiting for the judgment in the case of a high-profile client, Wikileaks leader Julian Assange, who is fighting extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges.
Elle Macpherson came dressed all in nude (no, not the nude, but the flesh colour in mode with fashionistas). Arriving at the palace, she was asked how she thought the Queen would fare as a contestant on popular television show Britain’s Next Top Model.
Macpherson, who has put out a range of designer underwear, joked the Queen would look “awesome in my undies”. In fact the Queen was her usual dignified self in a purple brocade suit.
Entertainer Rolf Harris was a late withdrawal due to illness, along with rugby league player Danny Buderus who couldn’t get a flight from Greece. Kylie Minogue could not make it but her former Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan was among the crowd in the state apartments at Buckingham Palace, along with designer Collette Dinnigan, singers Nick Cave and Gabriella Cilmi, actor Hugh Jackman, rugby league player Matt King, and Socceroos Tim Cahill and Mark Schwarzer.
Also mingling was actor Greta Scacchi, who is returning to Sydney in two weeks to prepare for ensemble performances of David Williamson’s new play, Nothing Personal.
Palace staff prepared trays of drinks and food – including Tasmanian sparkling wine, tiny lamingtons and coin-sized passionfruit pavlovas – in the red-brocade throne room.
Britons delicately inquired of Australians as to the warmth of the welcome the royal couple might receive. They were assured the republican tide was out at the moment, and Australians were not harbouring the kind of fervent nationalism that is inflaming some Scottish hearts.
The Queen and Prince Philip travel to Canberra on Wednesday for a 10-night Australian tour. They will visit Brisbane and Melbourne before opening the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Perth.

First published in The Age.

LONDON

IT WAS a right royal tantrum. The front door flew open and Prince Philip charged out.
A pair of tennis shoes and a racquet flew after him. An enraged Queen appeared in the doorway, screaming at him to stop running and ordering him back.
As a fascinated Australian film crew watched, cameras rolling, the Queen “dragged” her husband back into the chalet in which they were staying, and the door slammed. The crew had been waiting for the Queen to appear so she could be filmed looking at kangaroos and koalas, according to a new biography of the monarch.
It was March 6, 1954, and the Queen was halfway through an eight-week tour of Australia – part of a six-month world trip after her coronation. The couple was having a weekend break on the shores of the O’Shannassy reservoir in the Yarra Ranges of Victoria.
The crew had been waiting impatiently because the afternoon light was fading.
The second cameraman, Frank Bagnall, instinctively turned on his camera when he saw the front door open and so captured the memorable marital moment.
Today, it would be a world exclusive. Back then, different rules were in play. They were enforced by a curmudgeonly courtier, the royal press secretary Commander Richard Colville. He charged out “angrier than a wounded buffalo”, writes author Robert Hardman.
The senior cameraman Loch Townsend “was not about to enter mortal combat with the man British journalists knew as the Abominable No Man – or, simply, Sunshine”. Townsend exposed the film and handed it over.
The Queen soon reappeared, her serene public persona re-affixed. “I’m sorry for that little interlude,” she told Townsend, “but, as you know, it happens in every marriage. Now, what would you like me to do?”
The book, Our Queen, is being serialised in the Daily Mail in London and is due to be published on October 6. The Queen and Prince Philip start a 10-day visit to Australia on October 19.
It tells of a perfectionistic woman, who as a princess during a 1947 tour of South Africa took to prodding her mother’s Achilles tendon with an umbrella to keep the show running on time.
She has a particular stare for those who breach protocol or otherwise offend, described by one witness as “open eyes, absolutely no expression”.
She has also perfected a subtle way of intervening in political issues. The book says she received many residents’ letters over a plan for authorities to sell 1230 public homes to a private company. She wrote endless letters to the authorities asking polite but pointed questions. The residents were saved when the homes were sold for a knock-down price to a housing association.
But her temper is still sometimes on show to the royal household. She was enraged at being advised to fly the British flag at half mast at Buckingham Palace after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. One senior adviser said: “I have been scarred by the Queen.”
She became “incandescent” during a visit in 1973 by the president of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, and his wife. Mrs Mobutu had smuggled a small dog through customs and was ordering it steak from the palace kitchens. The Queen ordered: “Get that dog out of my house!”
But she also has a dry sense of humour. During one public engagement in Britain, the courtier who was meant to introduce her to a reception line had trouble getting out of his car because he was tangled up with his ceremonial sword. The monarch strode over to the line of waiting people, hand outstretched, and said: “I had better introduce myself. I am the Queen.”

First published in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The couple will arrive in Canberra on October 19 and go to Perth for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. They will visit Brisbane on October 24 and Melbourne on October 26.