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Band stop that racket now !!!” Someone says “Prat”
– just loud enough to be heard. We giggle and get
threatened with being locked up. Then a TV person
shouts “lights going on” and all of a sudden the
whole church lights up. What a shock. I’d never
been in Westminster Abbey. Amazing. Someone
looks over the top of where we are positioned,
notices the statues of Victorian worthies and says “
Look, it’s Morecambe and Wise” Not very funny,
but it made us laugh. Then a voice from below, no
doubt fussy verger, shouts “ Has anyone seen the
Queen’s stand in?” Someone in the Band says,
“No, but you’ll do!” This really did get a laugh,
especially when the verger asked one of the cleaners
if she was the stand in. Eventually the stand in was
found. “Christ, looks like my granny” says the guy
next to me. More threats of being locked up. I am
convinced some Band members are ventriloquists,
they are expert are speaking without moving their
lips but loud enough for people to hear.
And then it all starts. The music echoes all around
us and the organ joins in for “Crown Imperial”
What a sound – but you mustn’t say so. Never pass
comment – it’s a job. At 5am we are back in Vincent
Square and ready for bacon sarnies in the Regency
Café before we get changed again for Changing of
the Guard. Princess Anne got married to Captain
Mark Phillips and the rest, as they say, is history.
As for Westminster Abbey – all I saw was the tea
room and a quick look over the balcony. And I never
went in again for 32 years.
But then it’s 2005 and I am a trainee Blue Badge
guide. And now, from knowing very little about the
Abbey I need to know everything. Well, it seems
like everything. 3,000 memorials – learn them all!
Stained glass - know all about it! And what a place
and what a story it tells. Part of the Blue Badge
training is managing groups of people in difficult
and often confined spaces, and this is very relevant
in Westminster Abbey. Making sure that everyone
can see what you are talking about and can clearly
hear you, without drowning out those nearby, is an
art. As Blue Badge Guides are the only guides
allowed to guide in the Abbey, apart from their own
staff, we are trained to a very high level, both
information and guiding technique specifically for
the Abbey.
A great thing for us is you don’t have to queue for
ages at the west door, the main entrance for visitors,
while you are relaxing over a cup of coffee, the
guides are off getting the tickets ready to take you
straight in through the back door as it were. No
queue at all – lovely! If guiding is about telling a
story – with a beginning, a middle and an end, then
the entrance used exclusively for Blue Badge
groups is excellent Instead of being thrown into the
middle of the Church with the ‘ordinary’ visitors,
we walk around to the calm of Deans Yard. This
allows the guide to set the scene and groups are taken
in to the Abbey by way of the Cloisters which
immediately takes you back in time when the Abbey
was – well, an Abbey!
Of course, during autumn and winter the Abbey is
often almost empty and on these days, with the
sunlight shining through the windows, it is at its most
beautiful. A Valhalla for medieval Kings and Queens.
They are all ranged in a horseshoe around the tomb of
King Edward the Confessor. Beautiful tombs of marble
and alabaster. On training, you are told constantly that
visitors must not sit on the tombs!! Amazing how
many overseas visitors fancy a sit down and get comfy
on a tomb, complete with skull and crossbones. They
look quite put out if you ask them to stand.
Before I became a guide I thought I’d try a few tours
around London to see what it was all about. After all,
I was going to commit two years of hard work and
money to the training course. I booked on an Evan
Evans tour. Guides call these ‘service tours’ and they
are notorious for cramming huge amounts into the day
so that tourists can ‘tick off’ all of the sites as quickly
as possible! My day included a tour of the Abbey –
which the guide had to complete in 30 minutes. Almost
impossible you may think. I’ve seen the guide who did
my tour since then. He always wears a Panama Hat and
a white linen jacket – classic guide outfit for the photos
for the folks back home! The English gentleman at
large. His technique was to speak very quickly and
then jump in the air and bang his foot as a cue for us
to move on. Odd, but effective. This may have been
before the numbers in groups were limited as I seem
to remember we had almost 50 in the party. Anyway,
he gave us lots of information and we were back on the
coach in half an hour. Fortunately, on a City & Village
Tours visit we have a lot longer than 30 minutes!’
Enjoy a tour of Westminster Abbey in
2013, the 60th anniversary of HM the
Queen’s coronation in 1953.