It’s not every day the Queen invites you to tea. Admittedly, I’m not alone in being granted that honour. At the Royal Garden Party I went to last week, I was among several thousand dignitaries craning their necks to get a glimpse of Her Majesty. But it was still a lovely day out — more deeply affecting than I thought it would be.
The reason I was invited is because of my ‘service to the community’, which I assume is a reference to the West London Free School. I don’t suppose the Queen herself has been following my progress in the pages of this magazine — though you never know. Rather, my name was one of dozens put forward by the Department for Education in 2012 for ‘service to the community’.
I have to confess, when the email from the ‘Honours Team’ at the Department for Education first arrived on my iPhone I thought it might be in connection with something else.
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