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My Royalist-Jamaican mother must have been smiling down at me from her seat on the right-hand side of God as the taxi arrived to pick me up to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace some three weeks ago now. Since today would have been her seventy-third birthday, I hope she’ll still be smiling down at me as I add this little missive from my diary in her memory.
A taxi had been booked since morning. The idiot Eastern European driver parks his car at a bus stop two hundred metres from my flat, so I am forced to stride up to him suited and booted with dreadlocks flowing in the cold evening wind. He looks straight through as I reach the stationary Mercedes and starts the engine to pull out into the street. I quickly knock on his window and manage to open the passenger door as he steps on the brakes.
“Are you the car for Buckingham Palace?”
“Hurry up and get in, man,” he shouts back at me, “I’m parked in a bus lane. It’s a fifty pound fine!”
“I didn’t tell anyone to ask you to park here. I told your controller exactly where I live.”
“I was looking at Beaufort Mansions.”
“That’s your problem, mate, that’s not where I live.”
“My problem?” he says with a snarl. “If I had known there was a problem parking, I would not have accepted this job.”
Well, f**k-off then, I wanted to tell him but I didn’t want to be late to meet Her Maj, so I got in the car and bit my tongue.
“Just drive on, will you!”
He turned to look at me then and slaps me in the face with a breath so foul that I immediately have to open the window. I tried breathing through my mouth but the disease blowing out of his lungs was making me feel sick. I almost wanted to thank him when he looked away and kept his eyes on the road.
“Damn!” said I.
“What?” he replied.
“Nothing,” I lied, “But I’ll be needing a cash-point on the way.”
Had he been a little more friendly, I might even have offered him one of the mints in my pocket, but even the chill in the air couldn’t kill the stench. By the time we reach our destination, however, guided through the main gates of Buckingham Palace by security police, he has completely changed his attitude.
“Are you a little nervous about meeting the Queen?”
“I am a little.”
“Don’t worry, my friend, you won’t be alone.”
My friend now, is it? - I thought - you must be gearing up to charge me that little bit extra now that you think I’ve got friends in high places. He was, and he does, £20 from Chelsea to just down the road at Buckingham Palace, and I couldn’t even be bothered to argue with him.
“Will your driver be returning to fetch you afterwards?” a policeman opening my door wants to know.
“No,” I said. “He can go.” And I smiled to myself at the absurdity of it.
Guests had been specially selected to attend a Reception at Buckingham Palace to reflect their work and associations with commonwealth African countries prior to a State Visit to Uganda by The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh later in November, which would be followed by the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala, and so palace staff it seemed were all smiles.
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