Dear LPG, 

I am now 94 and I have sent my message having just learned that our Queen is no more.  I think that you only have to have taken a look at the television since it happened to know that weather you are a pro or anti royalist; her passing seems to have had an effect on all of us somewhere along the line.  As I have been watching all the coverage on television, so many people have been telling of their experiences of meeting her and I may well have met her too in a roundabout way.  

In Sierra Leon where I grew up, I started out as a Brownie.   At the school I attended, our head mistress encouraged us all to do something as well as study and we had a Girl Guide group at school.  

We also got involved in Girl Guide camps and I remember being chosen to come to England and take part in an international camp where we were all quite busy doing the usual Girl Guide things.  We were all split into groups according to the people we shared our tents with and there were real campfires.  At the end of one day’s activities we were told that the princess (as she was then) all dressed up in her uniform, had visited and spent a little time at the camp getting involved quite anonymously.  

There were so many of us there and I had little idea of what she looked like back then, but I often wondered if I had been next to her in the lunch queue or during one of the group activities that day.  I have often thought that I may have actually rubbed shoulders with the Queen without even knowing.  I went on to be a ranger and throughout my life, have always kept my ties to the organisation.

I have heard a lot said about the queen’s sense of duty and discipline and I think that Guiding helped me to learn a lot about those qualities too.  

A few of my friends and I worked out that today (if LPG have posted when I asked them to) is associated with a couple of relevant National celebrations.  It is both World Gratitude Day and the International Day of Peace and I wish her, and everyone in and beyond the world, both.

CJ, Brockley