Remembering

Okay, I am back from "The Hammer and Pincers" quiz with four pints of "Stones" in my belly. Though we did not win the overall prize this week, we were still first to a line of five correct answers. I have just stripped tonight's roasted chicken of any remaining meat and I have put the resultant carcass out on the lawn for a passing fox to sniff before guzzling down.

And so what are we left with when it comes to blogging?

I thought I might use this opportunity to capture a memory from long ago in written words. Arguably, memories are the means by which we mark our presence upon this spinning planet. Here we go.

I am sixteen years old and I have been chosen to represent East Yorkshire youth clubs  at a special reception in St James's Palace in London. It is to mark sixty years of youth clubs in England and Wales - under the auspices of The National Association of Youth Clubs.

Before the main event, I get to meet the pop singer Lulu, Lord John Hunt who led the successful Mount Everest expedition in 1953 and the famous DJ and TV presenter Jimmy Savile. He jokes that it is nice to have another Yorkshire lad down there in London and we shake hands. Retrospectively, it seems most distasteful that he was a patron of The National Association of Youth Clubs but back in 1971 nobody realised the true nature of that self-obsessed sex monster.

I visit a lavatory in St James's Palace and it is like no lavatory I have ever been in before. The Victorian toilet bowl is like a throne on a kind of platform and there are lotions and potions and soft white towels for hand cleaning.

On to the main event where there is a finger buffet with china teacups and strict instructions about where we should all stand before The Queen Mother drifts into the room with her little entourage.

She was Queen Elizabeth II's mother and formerly the wife of King George VI who came to the throne by default when King Edward VIII abdicated.

She reaches me and puts out a gloved hand, smiling with her little brown teeth on display. She would have been my current age (71) that afternoon but she seemed older. She asks me where I am from and then she asks me if I know Hotham Hall where she enjoyed some happy times when she was a child but I don't know the place. She is most charming and soon moves on to the next youth club member - representing a different county.

I find my way back to Kings Cross Station and catch an evening train back to Hull. Looking back, I think I must have had some balls back then to negotiate the London transport system at the age of sixteen when I was a country bumpkin. Stuff like that did not faze me at all.