THE QUEEN UNDERGOES BIG PHYSICAL STRAIN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27073, 23 June 1953, Page 8

THE QUEEN UNDERGOES BIG PHYSICAL STRAIN

LONDON LETTER

[BV

K. W. McCOOK,

London Correspondent of “The Press”}

London, June 12—The considerable mental and physical by the Queen during her long Coro nation ceremony in has not been lessened during the last fortnight Since June 2 not a day has passed when she a public appearance; and her long list of P public engagements, banquets, receptions and investitures this summer has never been equalled by any o£ her predecessors. Her only completely free day for relaxation since the Coronation was when she sprat last Sunday at the Royal Lodge at Windsor The happiest photographs of the Queen were taken this week as she drove through the homeland of the Cockneys down the Old Kent road to Southwark. Her smiling responses to the cheers and waving of the poorer Londoners gave no sign of the’ OUS list of engagements she has undertaken this month. Both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh frequently stopped their car to allow children to come forward and present grimy bunches of flowers. Today as she drove down Fleet street on her way to lunch at the Guildhall with the Lord Mayor and Corporation, the strain of the last fortnight s events was beginning to tell, however. Sympathetic Londoners on all sides remarked how tired the Queen looked; and although she continued to wave and smile with her husband, it was obvious that she was feeling the tension of her Coronation season. If the Queen keeps all her engagements she will not have many free days before the end of July. After the fleet review next week, she will attend Ascot for four days and then she will leave for her visit to Scotland. Visits to Northern Ireland and Wales will follow, and after that a series of investitures and garden parties at Buckingham Palace. She will not be able to take a well-earned holiday with her family at Balmoral until August. Coronation Records Nearly 19,000 Londoners did not trust their alarm clocks on Coronation Day morning. The Post Office, which funs a service from each exchange to wake early risers by telephone, had a record number of calls and woke 18,979 people. The normal daily average is about 4000. The charge for an “early riser” call is 4Jd. Londoners and visitdrs have been flocking to Westminster Abbey to view the Coronation setting in all its splendour. Long queues have waited patiently outside the Abbey all this week. In the first three days that the Abbey was open to the public 29,508 paid 10s and 5s each to view the scene; on Monday, when the charge was reduced to 2s 6d, a further 11,000 saw the setting. More than £lO,OOO has already been paid in admissions. The money will go toward the Westminster Abbey restoration fund.

No count has been made of the millions of words describing the Coronation scene that were sent out by hundreds of press correspondents from London before June 2; and many more millions of words have been broadcast. On Coronation Day, however, the main British cable service, General Post Office, Cable and Wireless, transmitted more than 364,000 words, in press messages. Approximately 100,000 words were sent to Australia, the biggest transmission to any one country. London transport buses have carried than 350,000 people on their special tours of the Coronation route and floodlit buildings in the city. The tours of the route have been operating for 18 days, and will probably finish at the end of the month, when the Government decorations are. taken down, but the floodlight tours will continue throughout the summer. Seaside resorts have already protested that coach tours and bus tours around London are taking away hundreds of thousands of visitors from the coast resorts. T.T. Race Deaths Four fatal accidents in this week’s Tourist Trophy motor-cycle races on the Isle of Man brought the death roll of the 38-mile course up to 20 in meetings held since the war. With higher speeds being achieved with more powerful machines each year, considerable' agitation has arisen about allowing the races to continue. The death roll has been rising steadily since 1948. One cyclist was killed that year. In 1949 two died; in 1950, four; in 1951, six; and in 1952, five. Though the manufacturers claim that high-speed racing is the most exacting test that they can give to their cycles, it is also true that a success over the gruelling T.T. circuit gives them a big fillip in sales of winning makes. Transport authorities and police are alarmed about the hundreds of youths and young girls killed on motor-cycles each year through speed-

ing. The T.T. races, with their mourn ing death roll, hardly make for publicity for motor-cyclists’ care the roads. Giants Return Gog and Magog, the City of Yqm don’s two mythical giants, have rk turned to their accustomed places u the Guildhall in time for the visit to the city. Smaller than thel! predecessors, which were destrovM when the Guildhall was damaged S enemy action in 1940, the new gianZ are 9ft 3in high and weigh about I2cw? each. They have been carved in Jim? wood by Mr David Evans and nrT sented to the city by a former EoS Mayor, Sir George Wilkinson. The new effigies are fourth m honourable line. The first pair wers destroyed in the Great Fire of Lo n don in 1666; their successors remains until 1708, when they had to be iS Blaced,8 laced, since mice and rats had eaten lem away. The pair destroyed in 1940 were carved in 1708 by a’ carvS of ships’ figureheads for £7O. Professional Runner at Five Amateur athletic authorities are itill conferring over the case of a flve-y ea f old girl who romped home flr s » in the Wingerworth. Derbyshire, potato race in the village's Coronation sporX meeting. The parish council had been warned that if cash prizes were given the winners would be branded as pro. fessional runners and would be in. eligible for life for amateur event*. The children ran the race, and the winning tot received 7s 6d, the second place runner receiving ss, and tha third placed runner 2s 6d. If the Ania teur Athletic Association keeps to fa harsh interpretation of its rules fat young children there will soon be very few amateur runners left in England since small cash prizes are normal in village sports. Starlings Win Again

In its fight against the throngs of starlings that foul buildings in Trafal. gar square, the Ministry of Works ha* also to ward off attacks by well-mean, ing bodies. Recently, the Ministry affixed a substance to the Nation*] Gallery ledgings to discourage the noisy birds from perching on the building.

Later starlings were picked up with a sticky substance on them. Th® Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals launched an in. vestigation 'and had the substance analysed. It was found that it con. tained a type of bird-lime which Is banned under the Protection of Birds Act.

Though a technicality saved the Ministry from being prosecuted by the bird-lovers, it had to give an assurance that the material would not be used again. While the Ministry racks its “back-room’’ brains to find some means of ridding the square of the feathered pests, the thousands of starlings continue to drown the roar of traffic in the square in their noisy wheelings. Robot Gun Fight

A neat package, one cubic foot in size, will enable British fighter pilots to shoot down enemy aircraft speedily. The package is a radarranging set that sweeps the sky ahead of the fighter plane. When an enemy aircraft comes into range, thp set “locks on” to the target and then feeds back range and sighting information automatically to the pilot’s automatic gunsight. All the pilot has to do is to keep the gunsight bead on the enemy aircraft and squeeze the trigger at the most favourable moment. Wilfred Wins Through Radio artist, Wilfred ("Have a Go") Pickles, fulfilled a 21-year-old vow this week when a short notice appeared in the “London Gazette” notifying that all the debts of “Pickles, Fred, of Leamington road, Ainsdale, Lancashire and Pickles, Wilfred, of Staveley road, Ainsdale, builders” had been paid in full. The money had been owing since the Pickles building business failed during the depression. Wilfred Pickles paid off all the debts at a rate of interest at 4 per cent, a year. On top of the original debt, he paid compound interest totalling 88 per cent, to clear his family name. Fish Friers’ Lament Fish and chip experts met fc solemn conclave in Sunderland this week to discuss a reduction in their trade. Their verdict: blame the farmer if fish and chips are not as good as they used to be—the fish friers . are getting poor quality potatoes. The friers’ president claimed that farmers were not interested in marketing good quality potatc es while they were receiving guaranteed prices for their crops. And the friers’ also have a problem to solve about the fish in the fish and chips. Though cod makes up more than half the catch landed in Britain, it is not popular with British people.