On Duty With the Queen: My Time as a Buckingham Palace Press Secretary by Dickie Arbiter
Authors: Dickie Arbiter
Ads: Link
suite shower facilities. The front of the plane was a
Majlis
– the Arabic word meaning a place for sitting. Finally, the upper deck was arranged as a lounge, with low coffee tables that rose up to form a full dining table. Once we had reached our cruising altitude of 45,000 feet, dinner was served.
At 4:45am we roared into London’s Heathrow Airport in the lap of luxury. With cars awaiting our arrival on the apron, the Princess was whisked off to Kensington Palace, getting her home with plenty of time to spare before her boys woke up.
CHAPTER 5
The Myth-busting Princess
November 1989
M y first year in the Royal Household flew by in a haze of activity. We arranged every tour schedule two to three months in advance, which required a lot of pre-tour organization and administration, as well as two roundtrips to each country – once for the recce, and then again two months later for the tour itself.
Following Diana’s solo trip to New York, we had two further overseas tours, this time involving both Charles and Diana. By the end of that year, I had notched up seven overseas trips, travelling once to New York and twice to the Gulf, Indonesia and Hong Kong respectively. I was in my element, though my suitcase was taking a battering.
*
May 1957 saw the beginning of my adventure to the African continent, and the beginning of a wanderlust that I never relinquished. My mother, then 36, and I set off by train from London’s Waterloo station, she looking glamorousin a sharp tailored skirt suit, and I in grey flannels, blazer and tie. In those days one always dressed formally when travelling; T-shirts and trainers were not yet in fashion and as such were strictly reserved for the playing fields.
I had resigned myself to departing England’s shores for a life on a continent that seemed a million miles away. Being 16, I was excited by the adventure of it all, which helped quell my natural teenage anxieties.
Over the course of almost three weeks our journey would take us around the coast of Africa to Durban, but I was perplexed by a number of questions: What did one do at sea for all that time? Was there entertainment? Would there be anyone else my age, and uppermost in my mind, would there be girls on board? The issue of quite what I was going to do once we arrived in Rhodesia didn’t even enter my thinking; all I could see was three weeks of playtime ahead, and I fully intended to make the most of it.
The train took us to Southampton, a bustling seaport with ships of every conceivable size from all over the world loading and unloading their cargo. There were ocean-going liners awaiting passengers, civil servants heading off to colonial postings and migrants setting off to begin a new life on distant shores. It was a different era – a time in which Great Britain still had her colonies and exported not only goods, but also people. Those emigrating represented a chance to live a different kind of life in decidedly less inclement surroundings. Ocean cruising simply for the sake of a luxury vacation would not become mainstream for several years.
My mother and I fell into the migrant category,travelling aboard the Union-Castle Line’s
Athlone Castle
– a modest ship of a little under 26,000 tonnes – to begin our new life in Southern Rhodesia. The journey from Southampton to Cape Town took 13 days, but it was not our final port of disembarkation. We still had to sail an additional four days around the Cape, stopping off at Port Elizabeth and East London before reaching our destination, Durban.
The journey was not without incident. We sailed through the infamous Cape Rollers – waves that can reach dizzying heights in excess of 40 feet. For a ship with no stabilizers, it left nothing to the imagination as we rocked and rolled on the high seas.
Otherwise life on board was fairly soporific. An endless round of sunbathing, eating and drinking by day, followed by nights that involved more of the same, with the only difference
Majlis
– the Arabic word meaning a place for sitting. Finally, the upper deck was arranged as a lounge, with low coffee tables that rose up to form a full dining table. Once we had reached our cruising altitude of 45,000 feet, dinner was served.
At 4:45am we roared into London’s Heathrow Airport in the lap of luxury. With cars awaiting our arrival on the apron, the Princess was whisked off to Kensington Palace, getting her home with plenty of time to spare before her boys woke up.
CHAPTER 5
The Myth-busting Princess
November 1989
M y first year in the Royal Household flew by in a haze of activity. We arranged every tour schedule two to three months in advance, which required a lot of pre-tour organization and administration, as well as two roundtrips to each country – once for the recce, and then again two months later for the tour itself.
Following Diana’s solo trip to New York, we had two further overseas tours, this time involving both Charles and Diana. By the end of that year, I had notched up seven overseas trips, travelling once to New York and twice to the Gulf, Indonesia and Hong Kong respectively. I was in my element, though my suitcase was taking a battering.
*
May 1957 saw the beginning of my adventure to the African continent, and the beginning of a wanderlust that I never relinquished. My mother, then 36, and I set off by train from London’s Waterloo station, she looking glamorousin a sharp tailored skirt suit, and I in grey flannels, blazer and tie. In those days one always dressed formally when travelling; T-shirts and trainers were not yet in fashion and as such were strictly reserved for the playing fields.
I had resigned myself to departing England’s shores for a life on a continent that seemed a million miles away. Being 16, I was excited by the adventure of it all, which helped quell my natural teenage anxieties.
Over the course of almost three weeks our journey would take us around the coast of Africa to Durban, but I was perplexed by a number of questions: What did one do at sea for all that time? Was there entertainment? Would there be anyone else my age, and uppermost in my mind, would there be girls on board? The issue of quite what I was going to do once we arrived in Rhodesia didn’t even enter my thinking; all I could see was three weeks of playtime ahead, and I fully intended to make the most of it.
The train took us to Southampton, a bustling seaport with ships of every conceivable size from all over the world loading and unloading their cargo. There were ocean-going liners awaiting passengers, civil servants heading off to colonial postings and migrants setting off to begin a new life on distant shores. It was a different era – a time in which Great Britain still had her colonies and exported not only goods, but also people. Those emigrating represented a chance to live a different kind of life in decidedly less inclement surroundings. Ocean cruising simply for the sake of a luxury vacation would not become mainstream for several years.
My mother and I fell into the migrant category,travelling aboard the Union-Castle Line’s
Athlone Castle
– a modest ship of a little under 26,000 tonnes – to begin our new life in Southern Rhodesia. The journey from Southampton to Cape Town took 13 days, but it was not our final port of disembarkation. We still had to sail an additional four days around the Cape, stopping off at Port Elizabeth and East London before reaching our destination, Durban.
The journey was not without incident. We sailed through the infamous Cape Rollers – waves that can reach dizzying heights in excess of 40 feet. For a ship with no stabilizers, it left nothing to the imagination as we rocked and rolled on the high seas.
Otherwise life on board was fairly soporific. An endless round of sunbathing, eating and drinking by day, followed by nights that involved more of the same, with the only difference
Similar Books
