I have just had a very surreal hour of my life pass by.
Today was a big day for us lowly folk in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, as The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were visiting our town. They were stopping by to pay their respects and gratitude for the works done by the Charity Centrepoint, of which His Royal Highness, Prince William the Duke of Cambridge, has been a patron of for 13 years- following in the footsteps of his late mother, the wonderful Princess Diana.
Centrepoint is a wonderful charity which was set up to help homeless youths- aged 16-25-year-olds- get their lives back on track, by providing housing and support as well as life skills. Upon their visit, the Royal Couple donned their aprons and mucked in to help serve lunch to some of the young people currently sheltering at our local centre.
So back to me and why it was surreal.
My oldest Daughter and I were sat watching Hater's Back Off (a cheesy guilty pleasure of mine...don't judge me) when we heard a low flying helicopter pass over our house. We thought nothing more about it as we sat there in front of the telly.
A short while later my Niece rang and told us that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's helicopter was on the Pit field across the road from us!
We live on a main road/street that runs alongside a large playing field that once housed one of our towns many, long closed coal mines. It has since been dubbed a memorial park, in memory of all the miners that died during a big explosion that happened at the pit that was there, many years ago. It is now a popular walking park and known as a local sports field, where many a Sunday league team plays.
It's also the perfect place locally to land a Royal helicopter.
My Niece rung us to tell us that 'Will and Kate' had indeed landed on the field, that is no more than one hundred metres away from our home. We scurried around the house to see if we could see them through various windows, but our view was obscured by the many trees that line our street. As autumn still hasn't claimed all of the leaves from them yet, it meant that any chance of seeing them this way was a lost cause. So we did what anyone else would do, we got our shoes on, grabbed our camera's, rushed out of the house, and over to the field for a better look.
We were not disappointed!
There on the field- in all, it's grandeur- sat the beautiful, gleaming Royal 'chopper'.
as I took photographs of it sat there, my camera flashed up to tell me that the internal memory was almost full, and to my horror, I realised I had left my SD card in my laptop!
I was gutted as it meant that I had to delete the few I had taken, and couldn't risk taking many more if I wanted to capture a nice one of the Royal couple.
For a while, we wondered if they were already in the helicopter, waiting to be transported by road to our local Centrepoint, or whether they were actually on their way back to the makeshift helipad.
A small crowd of onlookers had gathered around us. and many cars had slowed down to ask what was going off.
After being sat on the field's boundary wall for ten minutes a procession of police motorbikes started to come down the street right by us, followed by a very nice car. Will and Kate sat in the back and were happily waving to us all, through their opened car window. I wasn't quick enough with my camera to get the shot before they had turned into the field to drive back to their waiting 'chopper'
As they got out of their chauffeur driven car, they took another moment to wave to the crowds again, before climbing aboard
This isn't your everyday occurrence, especially for someone like me who's just a regular Jolene! it certainly wasn't something I expected to see when I got out of bed today.
Thanks for stopping by
XOXO
