Children were left disappointed after the Queen refused to allow them to personally present her with flowers at Sandringham today. The Queen broke with tradition last week by declining to accept flowers from children in person as she left morning service at St Mary Magdalene church. Police told parents in the crowd it was because too many youngsters had wanted to hand over bouquets on Christmas Day making her late for lunch, although Buckingham Palace denied this. Around a dozen children had hoped the Queen would have a change of heart and hopefully turned up with flowers this Sunday morning. But police officers monitoring the crowd of around 250 people told the youngsters that the Queen would still not be accepting them. Dressed in a beige coat and matching hat, the Queen came straight out of church and was driven away in her maroon Bentley, accompanied by her cousin Lady Mary Colman. Some children left their bouquets in a pile outside the 13th century church after police said the flowers would be taken to Sandringham House later. Other youngsters handed their floral gifts to guests of the Queen who were walking the 600m back to Sandringham House with Prince Philip. One of the Royal guests who accepted flowers told the child’s mother: “I am sorry. It is a great disappointment.” Elizabeth Quintrell, 72, waited three hours in the cold with her great-granddaughters Kiera Quintrell, eight, and Megan Radford, six, only to be told the girls would not be allowed to hand over their flowers. Mrs Quintrell of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, said: “It was a great shame. “There were only a few children here with bouquets so it would not have taken very long. “I brought the two girls to Sandringham House in the summer and they saw the place where the Queen has her Christmas tree. “I told them we would come back over Christmas and they might be able to give her some flowers and they had been looking forward to it. “We made some special bouquets with red, white and blue flowers and I got them up at 6.30am so we could drive over. “It was quite disappointing to be told that the Queen would not be taking flowers personally, but I suppose if I was her age, I probably wouldn’t want to do it either.” Sienna Wheeler, eight, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, who was in a wheelchair after a hip operation last month, waited outside the church with her sister Imogen, ten, and their grandfather David Branton, 69, but could only watch as the Queen got into her car. She said: “I don’t really mind that I could not give her my flowers. It was just a lovely to see the Queen.” Mr Branton of Spalding, Lincolnshire, said: “We did bring some flowers along, but the Queen didn’t take them. We were told to leave them and the girls were happy with that. “We don’t want a sob story. The girls were just thrilled to see the Queen and they were warned that there was a chance that he Queen might not accept the bouquets.” Veteran Royal watcher Mary Relph said she thought the Queen’s tradition of personally accepting flowers outside church had now finished but added: “I don’t want to say anything about it.” The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Rev James Langstaff, preached at the service before joining the Queen at Sandringham House. Last week Buckingham Palace dismissed suggestions that the Queen was not accepting flowers as she did not want to be late for lunch. A spokesman said: “Her Majesty is always grateful whenever people wish to present flowers and she accepted many flowers on Christmas Day. However, she does not accept them in person on every occasion.”
You have to wonder about the mentality of someone who would queue in inclement for hours to hand flowers to an old woman who already owns half the flowers in the country.
If, like me, you'd had the pleasure of 2 hours of non stop unprotected anal sex with Lizzie back in 1986 you would know there's nothing talentless about her.
I don't get why anyone would want to stand outside a venue screaming at One Direction or some actor but some people get a real buzz out of meeting famous people and they are free to (try to) do that. No one should knock them for it as it's their choice and, let's face it, it would be fairly easy to put together a character assassination on any one of us. That is largely true but is not a reason to get rid given how little they cost us, how much free global advertsing they create and the potential horror of a Tony Blair or similar as our head of state.
I have no time for Blair or any of his clones but i'd much rather have an elected head of state than someone Born into the role. As it stands we are no better democratically than Syria and North Korea.
Indeed Stopme - they're a lot cheaper than the sectarian schooling policy that many on here are so quick to defend .
Always look on the bright side, hopefully thats a bunch of children who now wont grow up to be arse-licking monarchists.
You would rather have an elected president but the majority would rather keep the monarchy. We are keeping the monarchy for the foreseeable: that IS democracy.
If the scots have a referendum about independence then we should have one about the monarchy. Am ready to bet that if people knew the real cost of it they'd **** them off instantly
I'd be happy to have that referendum but it would be a waste of time, there's no chance they'd be got rid of.
That's where you're wrong. If people knew how much they suck out the economy and it wasn't only the upper-middle classes voting, they'd be straight out
