She brightened a dull day with her charm Apr 5 2002 By Julia Lewis, South London Press(posted 8054 days ago)WHENEVER she looks at the flourishing copper beach tree in the garden of Trinity Hospice, Iris Allen always thinks of the 'lovely day' when the Queen Mother came to plant it. Mrs Allen, of Walcot Square, Kennington, isn't referring to the weather. She remembers clearly the wretched, grey day in March, 1981, that was considerably brightened up by the royal visit. Mrs Allen was working as a volunteer at the hospice on Clapham Northside. She and the other volunteers had done all they could to make the grounds ready for their royal visitor. The occasion of her visit was to mark the start of a renovation scheme for the garden. The Queen Mum, who was patron of Trinity Hospice, had read in the hospice newsletter that several trees had had to be cut down because they were unsafe and had offered to plant a new one. There had been a lot of rain so duckboards had been laid out over the grass in readiness. In those days there were not nearly as many volunteers as there are now - the hospice was smaller - and most of them were women. So, for the Queen Mum's visit, husbands were invited as well, and each one was positioned by a door to open it for her as she passed. But it didn't go quite as planned, which is one of the reasons why the royal visit lasted twice as long as scheduled. She said: "She stopped, shook hands and spoke to every one of them instead of just walking through." "Then she came out into the garden and we were all there. "My husband, who worked at the time at County Hall, had borrowed the ceremonial spade, which was a pristine stainless steel one. John Smythe, the caretaker, had been chosen to hand the spade to her and had carefully rehearsed the move beforehand. But what he hadn't reckoned on was that the Queen Mum would hand him her handbag to hold. "Fair exchange is no robbery", she quipped, as she passed it to the astonished man. After the planting, the Queen Mum chatted to everybody on the duckboards and when it was Mrs Allen and her husband Doug's turn to meet her, they found her in a similar jokey mood. "Who is the boss of you two?" she asked. Mrs Allen, who is still a volunteer at the hospice, remembers how she went around the wards speaking to 'every single patient' and, in particular, the way in which she received the bouquet that was presented to her. She said: "She looked at it and held it, and said how beautiful it was, as if she'd never been given one in her life before. "She had a lovely way with her, a natural warmth." Afterwards, she recalled, everybody stood outside to wave her off. She said: "It always stands out in my memory as a lovely day. "It was March, the duckboards were down but it stands out in my memory even now. "And when we met her at Westminster Abbey at a reception for Trinity Hospice's 100th anniversary in 1991, she asked us how the tree was."
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