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First post-baby date night and we’ve set the bar pretty high for future dates. We were heading for dinner at Buckingham Palace. All my hard work making Pret a Manger look like a Saturday night treat goes out the window. We’d been invited along as guests of Motor Neurone Disease Association (
I signed their charter back in January and so can you ) and was the unlikely guest of Princess Anne and amongst such exalted company as Stephen Hawking, Victoria Wood, Benedict Cumberbatch and Greg Davies from off of the Inbetweeners. Thank goodness Greg was going to be there and that we got to sit together at dinner (at the end of the table, away from the important people) as it was good to be with someone I knew and who I knew would be equally childish about the whole thing.
I had been out during the day to get the necessary black tie - I was planning on wearing my wedding suit with a new shirt and ready-tied bow tie, but managed to find an off the peg tuxedo that fitted me well enough to get away with it as long as no one looked too closely. It might come in useful for future snooker frames.
After having once
got lost in Buckingham Palace, it was cool to be allowed in as a guest and not have to be overly scared of being bayonetted by a guard for trespass. Though I felt a bit of a fraud being there and when you think of the personages that have dined here in the last 200 years I was certainly bringing the tone down. We did manage to get a couple of photos in in the courtyard (though I said to Catie, "Don't take a picture of me next to Greg, I will look like a hobbit" and he said, "You will look like what you are.") We weren’t allowed to take our phones into palace (which was rather cruel to parents away from their baby for the first time - though my wife kept hers in her handbag and checked it when she went to the loo), and we were directed up a staircase and through a long hall full of art into a golden room with an antique piano or harpsichord in it. We were given English sparkling wine (served in glasses with an E II crest) and there were crisps and nuts out as an aperitif, Kettle crisps mind you, none of you Monster Munch. Catie has not been drinking more than the occasional glass of wine since we got back from St Petersburg and I am a massive lightweight when it comes to boozing, so it was possibly a mistake for us both to down three or four glasses of bubbly before dinner.
We were then introduced to Princess Anne, who has always seemed one of the better royals to me, no nonsense, doing loads of charity work and
refusing to be kidnapped. She did a good job of affecting interest in our lives and I got a bit tongue-tied as I discussed the MND charter and how I’d been “made” to sign it. She talked to Ben Shepherd off of Breakfast television about the works of art on display and how she’d had to lend a couple of her own paintings to an exhibition and was worried that they might not get returned. I wanted to chip in that I knew how she felt as I’d once lent my box set of season 2 of the Wire to someone and never seen it again. I suspect she would have laughed, but even though I was a bit tiddly I remained on best behaviour.
I am not the biggest supporter of the idea of royalty, but I love palaces and history (and the positive side of their being super rich people is that they do tend to preserve art and historical items and pay for the creation of amazing buildings and sculptures). Though the Winter Palace in St Petersburg had made me feel a bit sickened by wealth (in comparison to the peasant class of Tsarist Russia), Buckingham Palace didn’t make me feel as bad for some reason. It’s bizarre to think of banquets like this one going on here and even though this one was for charity it still involved dozens of waiting staff and fine wine (thankfully served in quite tiny glasses or things might have turned a bit more lairy at our end of the table. I looked up at the portraits of the eighteenth and nineteenth century aristocrats and kings on the wall. They’d maybe once been eating in this very room. I mean it’s insane and unfair, but it was incredible to witness for a night. My favourite bit was when Greg told us what he considers to be his most embarrassing moment (and imagine how bad that must be) during an MND dinner at Buckingham Palace. I would have loved it if Princess Anne had been standing behind him hearing the awful thing he was describing. Or if the table had gone suddenly quiet and everyone had heard what he was saying. I threatened to write about it in the Metro and he told me that if I did the gloves would be off. It almost feels worth it for the terrible and destructive consequences to us both.
We were also really hoping the Queen might pop down in her nightie and help herself to a satsuma, but although the flag on the Palace indicated that she was in, we didn’t get to see her. She might have been in the other room.
I think that otherwise we managed not to embarrass ourselves too much, though Catie and me were a little drunk and high-spirited. I resisted trying to steal a glass or a spoon but I wondered how many go missing at an event like this (I noticed that the little stands for the menus were picked up sharpish by the waiting staff). Catie plucked up the courage to speak to Victoria Wood, though I did not and I nearly bumped into Benedict Cumberbatch in the toilet. I don’t think I am likely to ever become part of the establishment because even when I accidentally end up at something like this I tend to hang around at the edges and fail to network.
It was a properly surreal, but very amusing evening. I don’t think my grandad would have believed such a thing was possible. To be honest I am finding it quite hard to believe. I’ve got lost in Buckingham Palace and now I’ve got pissed in there too. My life likes to throw in these crazy incidents amongst the general mundanity and I am glad that a night like tonight still seems impossible and mad rather than something that happens all the time.
