Probus goes to Windsor Castle!

After a short business meeting discussing future events and trips, led by our chairman Chris Saunders, we had the pleasure of welcoming Nigel Rickettes as our guest speaker.
Nigel told us that he had trained as a furniture restorer, not knowing that he would soon be employing his skills at Windsor Castle, the largest populated castle in the world!
Nigel was there for some 5 years and had many anecdotes to share with us. He joined, after a rigorous interview and security scanning in 1980.
With 645 rooms he remembered how difficult it was to find the location he was supposed to be in, at times. Nigel explained that apart from furniture restoration he and a colleague had the job, every Christmas, of dressing the tree which stood at 25 ft tall and, like the tree in Trafalgar Square, was supplied from Norway as a present to the Queen.
Sixty sets of lights had to be draped on the tree. Nigel related the tale of holding the bottom of a very long ladder as his colleague climbed to the top. Everything was going well until several corgis appeared, the number increased until there were twelve corgis nipping at Nigel’s ankles.
To escape the pain, Nigel started to climb the bottom of the steps, but was rescued when their ‘owner’, the queen, entered the room and called the corg’s off!
Nigel stated that there was much pomp and circumstance especially on State visits and recalled Ronald Reagan’s state dinner in the early 80’s. For Nigel that meant much French polishing of extremely long tables in readiness for the occasion.
We were shown seating plans with the Queen always in the middle and others seated in accordance with their seniority further down the table.
In 1981 Charles married Diana and the staff, including Nigel, were each give a piece of the wedding cake and a small bottle of champagne which Nigel has kept and had brought along to show us.
There were many other tales and the Probus audience thoroughly enjoyed their visit to Windsor Castle.
After a teaching career in furniture restoration, which followed, Nigel has settled in Westbury and recently set up his own restoration business in the town. A large thank you came from chairman Chris Saunders, followed by much applause from the members.