The Apprentice meets the Queen

Yes, I got presented to the Queen today. Sorry no pictures, the only cameras allowed were the official press photographers. We may get one of the trust members with the Queen from the AP photographer in due course.

You only shake Her Majesty's hand if it is offered and then you do a wee bob and say, "How do you do Ma'am". The Queen is tiny, I'm 5' 4'', but she must now be all of 5ft.

One of my fellow trustees, M. who is Irish, captured the experience brilliantly when she said to me, "As my mother would say, "Now, doesn't she just look like herself?" "

And that absolutely nails how you feel/react to being in front of that iconic face. It was wet so she had a wee beige cape over her pink suit, the usual Mad Hatter's Tea Party hat and a big see-through umbrella which was edged in pink.

My son was acting as gate-keeper, he looks after the garden gates on the weekends, and he got to talk to all the security officers with their headsets and bulges under their jackets. He was letting the Queen and her party into the garden from the adjacent church of St Mary's.

Other news is that I entered a competition run by SCAPE,on coastal erosion,and while I didn't win my shot's been selected to be included in a nationwide tour of Scottish galleries, including being hung in the Scottish Parliament for a while, and possibly featured in a national newspaper supplement.

This is one I took for the competition, but it wasn't my final entry, which I'm now not allowed to reproduce until the exhibition is launched.