RIGHT from the very start, let me lay my cards on the table: I think the world of the Queen.
Of course, I am not alone. There are millions, literally millions, of people who think as I do.
But my steady devotion goes right back to a double-decker wooden pencil box with a sliding top, a stencil of Her Majesty on it and my name inked on to the reverse, dating back to Coronation Day in 1953.
The Queen looks back over her shoulder with a calm and friendly smile — and I knew then, as I know now, that she would never let me down.
I still have it. It is kept with my tiny lead model of Her Majesty taking the salute at Trooping the Colour. Her right arm is hinged to enable her to swing it up to her tip-tilted bonnet with its plume.
She sits side-saddle, easily holding the reins in her confident left hand. The mare she rides is called Burmese.
This little model has pride of place on my shelf and in my heart, because I had seen the movie The Coronation three times — twice in black and white and once in glorious colour — in the huge hall in the Army School in Kuala Lumpur, ceiling fans turning lazily above the packed audience of us, the Army brats.
I had a Coronation medal on a ribbon, which I pinned to my chest — lost now, or I would still be wearing it — and a tiny, dazzling State Coach with horses made of lead but gilded and heavy.
At seven years old, I was too young to have heard and understood the Queen’s vow to serve the country and the Commonwealth, whether her life be long or short, made when she was 21 — and I can still hardly write the words without my eyes brimming.
Such a vow! Would anyone of us ever have promised that when our lives were just beginning? But she moved easily to the front of the pantheon of Marvellous Ones I kept in my heart.
