Pomp and Circumstance

I just got waved at by Prince Phil and the Queen. I'm more pleased about Prince Phil because, let's face it, the man's a comedy genius.

I knew they waved at me be cause I was close enough to make eye contact and there were only five or six of us stood at the railings. One of the advantages of working where I do is that they let us out of the back gate and into Horseguards. Normally Horseguards is off limits when the Queen is processing through it, but being Civil Servants, we were allowed at.

As I waved my hand in salutary fashion in return, two thoughts went through my head.

The first was that, as I pulled my hand out of jacket to return the greeting, at least three guns would have been trained on me, from the snipers on various rooftops.

The second was "what is the protocol for returning a Royal greeting? Do you bow? Do you raise one hand in the manner of the Knight in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"? Or do you leap up and down like a loon? I like to think my measured response was mature and thoughtful. Phil probably thinks I'm a pleb though.