While driving around this week taking pictures of events and happenings celebrating the long serving reign of our queen, I was reminded of a photograph I took last year.
“Quick, come and have a look in here” suggested my wife, as I sipped a pint in the Propeller Inn pub at Bembridge on the Isle of Wight, next door to a busy little airfield, during a week’s holiday there.
The ‘here’ in question was an annexe to the bar area, where you could sit and have a quiet meal and a glass of wine, surrounded by machine guns, pistols, rifles, the odd grenade and rocket launcher, a variety of aircrew clothing, and general war memorabilia. And a life size cardboard cut-out photograph of Her Majesty. Of course.
Now, I know she gets about a bit. Very democratic in that respect. But that blue outfit just wasn’t in keeping with the general thrust of the place, if you get my drift. Something a little more casual would have gone down just as well, without upsetting the ambiance one jot.
Anyway, a polite “Good evening ma’am” and a couple of photographs to show the folks back home saw me easing myself slowly towards the exit, before I was asked to sign a pledge, or sing something patriotic.
No slaves here, for sure.
More photos in a similar vein can be found in this gallery.