Trooping The Colour

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31091, 21 June 1966, Page 14

Trooping The Colour

Sir, —I quite see “Elderly Woman’s” point, being elderly myself, but I should like to remind her that “The Press” wisely gives rein in this column to such trivialities as the time of milk deliveries or the condition of pavements, and a controversy invariably follows. I will not waste your correspondent’s time by explaining anything about a niece of historic pageantry which is dear to traditionalists but not to anyone else. This correspondence started with a harmless comment by “Nulli Secundus” on a “Press” article, was continued bv some lady who thought she had caught him out in a mistake, and was, in her turn, told by me a few things I thought she ought to know—though I did not snell napkin with two ks! There, as far as I am concerned, the matter ends. —Yours, etc, NULLI SECUNDA. June 20, 1966.

Sir, —I don’t think it really matters, but a little argument in these tough days is diverting, so I want to say that when I was young and living near London we were always taken to see the “Trooping of the Colours.” Perhaps, as “Elderly Woman” suggests, more than one Queen’s Colour was trooped then. But who cut out the “of” anyway? Was it the Guards Brigade (Oh! Sorry! A slip of the pen; the Brigade of Guards). And who cares if one goes up to London or down to town, and whether feather bonnets and bear skins are called busbies,

and I am sure the men concerned would rather be called batmen than servants. But the Guards must be different, even when the candid camera catches them in a wavery line at the Trooping of the Colour.—Yours, etc., ANOTHER OLD PERSON. June 20, 1966. [This correspondence is now closed. —Ed., “The Press.”]