After watching the rehearsals last week I decided to head back into town to see the Trooping of the Colour in all it’s splendour.
The crowds weren’t vast but it was nice to see some Royalists camped out early along The Mall to get the best view of the Royal Family on their way to the parade ground.
I stayed on the same side, a little further down from where I was last week and found myself next to a Russian family from Moscow. They had some questions and we got talking about the differences in traffic, weather and jokes between Russia and England.
It was really interesting to speak to them about what the recent power cut was like. Electricity is one of those things we take so much for granted that to loose it so dramatically and to watch society suffer must have been frightening. The had reports of people stuck in lifts, in the Metro and of surgical operations caught up in the black out.
Their power problems continued as when the main parade started their digital camera’s battery gave out. It seemed from the discussions (in Russian) that the son was on charging duty and forgot to charge it. As I was taking pictures anyway I got their email and said I’d forward on the best of what I was taking to them and so we parted with many smiles and handshakes.
With more people around it was a larger logistics effort for the Police to control the crowds but the only time things seemed to go a little awry was on the fountain at the front of Buckingham Palace where the press (lined up with bazooka sized lenses) and the public (with much smaller lenses) were allowed to mix. The chap from Reuters was having a minor toys out of pram moment but in the end we all got along well and all got pictures of the Royal Family lined up to watch the flypast and take the birthday greetings of the crowd.
It’s interesting to watch the Press work now using digital cameras and laptops hooked to mobile phones to rush the pictures to the picture desks. I was speaking to one older photographer who had covered the event for 20 years. He was well setup with one camera with a long lens setup on tripod and fired remotely for the group shots whilst he used a handheld camera to get any other shots he saw and liked. He was interesting to speak to and had a few useful tips. His wife, who had seen it all before, sat on the steps behind us reading a magazine with a resigned, “I’ll be here next year” look.
“See you next year”, he said from behind his handlebar mostauche as with a firm handshake we parted.
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